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THE LIFE AND LEGACY 

OF 

DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 




DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 
DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 



BY 
HARVEY TOLIVER COOK, Litt. D. 

PROFESSOR OF CREEK IN FURMAN UNIVERSITY 



NEW YORK 
M G M X V I 






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/ 



PREFACE 

Three and one hundred years ago, four South Carohn- 
ians in the House of Representatives, Williams, Cheves, 
Lowndes, and Calhoun were called by the Richmond 
Enquirer "a splendid constellation of talents." One of 
the stars in the group, David Rogerson Wilhams, was 
a large planter in Darlington District. His life was 
begun March 8th, 1776, and having been nourished 
through the Revolution by his widowed mother and 
educated at Society Hill, Charleston, Wrentham and 
Providence, he developed into a pioneer manufacturer 
and scientific agriculturist, while at the same time, his 
superabounding energy and public spirit made him 
one of the foremost in educational, political and military 
affairs. It has been the aspiration of the following 
chapters to retrace the footsteps, often effaced by the 
ravages of time and of men, and to rehabilitate, in a 
measure, the splendid figure of a Southern gentleman, 
with an occasional searchlight thrown upon the times, 
manners, morals, customs and high ideals which have 
almost vanished out of American life, in order that the 
force of his example might perchance "bear fruitage 
in the present and still richer fruitage in the future," 
in our farms, our schools, our mills, our homes, our 
politics and in all our human relations. The inevitable 
shortcomings and failure to reach the ideal cannot be 
ascribed to his friends and descendants, who so gener- 

V 



PREFACE 

ously furnished their credible traditions, manuscripts, 
rare books, contagious enthusiasm and even the sinews 
of war. Among those who contributed authentic tradi- 
tions were Messrs. C. D. and J. W. Evans, of DarUngton, 
Major J. J. Lucas and Mr. N. W. Kirkpatrick of Society 
Hill and especially Mr. John Witherspoon DuBose of 
Montgomery, Alabama. Those who furnished manu- 
script material were Professor Walter Bronson of Brown 
University, Mr. Bright Williamson of Darlington, Pee 
Dee materials; Mr. C. C. Wilson of Columbia, Minutes 
of the St. David's Society; Mr. William Godfrey of 
Cheraw, Minutes of the brigade under General Erasmus 
Powe; Miss Mary L. Coker of Society Hill, Minutes 
of the Welsh Neck Church and the Constitution of the 
Female Benevolent Society; Professor J. S. Ames of 
Johns Hopkins University, Governor Williams* Diary, 
1815-1816, and numerous letters found in the appen- 
dix; Mr. David R. WilUams of Camden, two letters 
written to Colonel Chesnut; Mr. A. S. Salley of Colum- 
bia, letter accepting the governorship; Mr. J. L. Farnum, 
Library of Congress Secretary, copy of one Crawford 
and one Wilhams letter; Adjutant General George 
Andrews, Washington, D. C, a copy of General Wil- 
hams' resignation; Mr. G. M. Salzgaber, Commissioner 
of Pensions; Mr. J. R. Coggeshall and Mr. Robert 
Macfarland, copies of important documents. 

Printed material was furnished by Professor Yates 
Snowdon of Columbia, Labor Organizations in South 
Carolina, 1742-1861 and Founders' Day, both issued 
as bulletins of the South Carohna State University; 
Mr. N. W. Kirkpatrick, the Newspaper Press of Charles- 
ton; Major J. L. Coker, pamphlets issued by the Pee 
Dee Historical Society; Mr. Bright Wilhamson, articles 

vi 



PREFACE 

relating to Darlington County and its diversified inter- 
ests; Mr. T. J. Kirkland of Camden, the Camden 
Journal, 1828-1830; Mr. A. H. Wells, The Mountaineer, 
1827-1830, Greenville, S. C; Mr. August Kohn, The 
Cotton Mills of South Carolina and the Water Powers 
of South Carolina; Mr. Alfred Moore of Welford, 
Landrum's History of Spartanburg County; Mr. J. 
E. Swearingen, State Superintendent of Education, 
School Statistics, 1913-1914; Commissioner E. J. Wat- 
son, Sixth Report; the Charleston Library, Miss Eliza 
Fitzsimons, Librarian, bound volumes of the City 
Gazette, the Courier, Mercury, and also broken sets of 
early agricultural papers; the Library of the State 
University, a bound volume of the Telescope and the 
account of LaFayette's journey through the state in 
1825; the Archives of the State, Columbia, deeds of the 
early settlers; the legislative records under the control 
of Secretary A. S. Salley of the Historical Commission; 
the Furman Collection in Greenville, the correspond- 
ence of Dr. Richard Furman and Rev. Edmund Bots- 
ford, 1785-1819. The Williams Family of Society 
Hill by Professor Ames, the Minutes of the St. David's 
Society, the Minutes of the Welsh Neck Church, Gregg's 
History of the Old Cheraws, and the Furman-Botsford 
letters are the groundwork of the earlier chapters. My 
acknowledgments are due especially to Professor Ames 
and to Mr. DuBose, both of whom read portions of the 
manuscript, corrected some errors, made some sugges- 
tions, but assumed no responsibility for the narrative; 
but all this kindly and generous assistance above men- 
tioned would have been of no avail, if Mr. John Wilkins 
Norwood of the Norwood National Bank of Greenville 
had not been an active cooperator in the undertaking. He 

vii 



PREFACE 

was born on the Pee Dee as were his father and grand- 
father before him. To his admiration of sterUng charac- 
ter, business capacity and integrity wherever found is 
due the moral and financial support of this memorial of 
the self-reliant, energetic, resourceful and high-minded 
Pee Deean, David Rogerson WilUams. 

Greenville, S. C, September 25, 1915. 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Great Pedee in South Carolina and 

Its First Settlers 3 

II. Amalgamation, Characteristics and the 

Family 13 

III. Slavery 19 

IV. The Welsh Neck Baptist Church and 

St. David's Society 31 

V. The Ancestry, Education and Marriage 

of David Rogerson WiUiams . . 42 

VI. His Career as an Editor .... 52 

VII. His Honored Mother 58 

VIII. In the Ninth Congress 64 

IX. In the Tenth Congress 73 

X. In the Twelfth Congress .... 83 

XI. His Military Services 98 

XII. Governor of South Carolina . . 106 

XIII. The Close of His Governorship . . 129 

XIV. The Factory 138 

XV. The Problem of Transportation and 

Travel 157 

XVI. Additions to Society 166 

XVII. The Family and His Provision for Its 

Future 174 

XVIII. His Interest in Education .... 190 

XIX. Cotton Oil Factory 197 

ix 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XX. His Main Business 210 

XXI. Unabated Interest in His Country's 

Welfare 235 

XXII. Unabated Interest in His Country's 

Welfare (Continued) 256 

XXIII. His Death and Burial 280 

XXIV. His Legacy and Descendants . . . 288 
XXV. The Overflow 298 

Appendix 317 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY 

OF 

DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 



CHAPTER I 

THE GREAT PEDEE IN SOUTH CAROLINA AND ITS 
FIRST SETTLERS 

THE colony at Charles Town began, after the 
treaty of Utrecht, 1713, to stretch out its hands 
for the trade with the Indians. One rested 
at Savannah Town, just below Hamburg in Edgefield 
District, the other at the Congarees near Columbia. 
At the former place, a market was opened for barter 
with the great Indian tribes, the Creeks, the Chickasaws 
and the Cherokees; at the Congarees, similar arrange- 
ments were made to accommodate the middle and 
lower Cherokees and the Catawbas. One trail from 
the Congarees led northwesterly toward the Blue Ridge 
and another northeasterly between the Broad and 
Catawba, toward the hunting grounds of the Catawba 
Indians (Logan). The Catawbas, once a northern 
tribe, had been pushed southward until they met on 
the banks of the river which bears their name, a brave 
band of Cherokees in a great battle which, having lasted 
the whole day, was concluded with articles of peace 
ever afterward to be observed. The territory of the 
Catawbas extended from that of the Cherokees on the 
west and southwest far eastward beyond the Cape 
Fear River, including the upper Pedee (Gregg). South 
of them and part of them finally, was the dwindling 

3 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

band of the Cheraws, who gave their name to the 
precinct. 

This upper Pedee, not lying on the main Indian trails 
which served then as railroads do now, was in the back- 
woods and not generally known even to prospective 
settlers. A standard geography in England in 1758 
gave the " Wateree, Santee, Cooper, Ashly, Coliton and 
Savannah" as the rivers of South Carolina. In the 
period 1730-1765 the great Pedee System, which drains 
over 17,000 square miles now within two states, was 
but a speck on the map to British eyes. The mother 
country was continuing to send out from a populous 
hive swarms of human beings, as adventurers, traders, 
and homeseekers; and, as represented by the govern- 
ment, it was a great radiator of energy and daring, so 
conspicuous and successful in the efforts put forth in 
wresting the North American continent and the rich 
trade in East Indies from its powerful French rivals. 

But the seemingly neglected upper Pedee was being 
preserved, unmolested and almost unvisited by white 
men, for a fresh and vigorous race, who found no fault 
with the situation. It was brought more prominently 
into notice in 1732, when the township of Queensboro 
on the lower Pedee was laid out and offered to settlers 
in tracts of fifty acres for each man, woman and child 
who would occupy and improve them and, after the 
first ten years, pay annually one dollar for every hun- 
dred acres. When the settlers in the Welsh Tract in 
Pennsylvania heard of these inducements, several of 
them came South to investigate and visit the townships 
opened for settlement. They were hospitably received 
and at their request 173,840 acres were laid off for the 
exclusive habitation of the Welsh. The immigrants 

4 



DAVID ROGERSON WELLIAMS 

for this Welsh Tract which was extended in the follow- 
ing year up the river were expected to come direct from 
the counties of Pembroke, Carmarthen in Wales, and 
from the Smaller "Welsh Tract" of 30,000 acres pur- 
chased in Penn's jurisdiction. It was settled first 
by Welshmen from the Welsh Tract church, which, be- 
coming a prohfic mother, sent out in thirty-four years 
successive detachments, north, northeast, south, west, 
and the colony to the distant Pedee. According to 
Benedict, there arrived on the Pedee, in 1737, James 
James and wife and three sons — Phihp, who was their 
minister; Abel, Daniel and their wives, Daniel Devonald 
and wife, Thomas Evans and wife, another Evans and 
wife, John Jones and wife, three of the Harrys — Thomas, 
David and John and his wife — Samuel Wild and wife, 
Samuel Evans and wife, and David and Thomas Jones 
and their wives. These thirty members, with their 
children and households, settled at a place called Cat- 
fish, on Pedee River, but they soon removed about 
fifty miles higher up the same river, where they made 
a permanent settlement, and where they all, except 
James James, who died at Catfish, were embodied into 
a church, January, 1738. In eight years the best land 
on the Pedee had been taken up and the tide of im- 
migration had turned up the Saluda. The exclusive- 
ness practiced had the appearance of clannishness, but 
when so many thousands of acres in the state were 
waiting for an owner, it loses all its ugly features. It 
was a useful precaution at the time and passed away 
insensibly and without the friction which accompanied 
ecclesiastical and political discrimination. The ques- 
tions asked were. Is he a Welshman? Is he a desirable 
character? They were living in the woods, surrounded 

5 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

by Indians, with whom one indiscreet white man might 
embroil the whole settlement. They feared their 
white neighbors as well as the Indians and therefore 
kept out of their bailiwick men not speaking their own 
language. This racial fence was kept up perhaps in 
the lifetime of the first settlers and until the English 
language was coming into use. It was long enough to 
give their principles time to take root and estabUsh a 
sort of hegemony in the minds of men, to which im- 
migrants from other allied races assented as an excellent 
standard for the community. "The country being 
in a wilderness state," said Bishop Gregg, "their posi- 
tion isolated, and their means limited, they selected 
such quantities of land, as suited their present neces- 
sities, influenced also, to some extent, by the consid- 
eration of compactness, which gratified their social 
propensities and enabled them besides to concentrate 
against sudden incursions of the Indians, by whom 
they were surrounded. Here on a virgin soil, they 
peacefully pursued their agricultural employments, be- 
ing richly rewarded for the common toils and hardships 
endured. In their new and yet wilderness home, drawn 
together more closely than by the common ties of friend- 
ship and of blood, surrounded by common dangers, 
against which they vigilantly guarded, with common 
wants and necessities sufficiently supplied, and meeting 
weekly around the consecrated altar to worship the God 
of their fathers, a more perfect unity, or virtuous and 
manly life can scarcely be conceived. Such was the 
scene presented by this infant band of brothers in the 
early days of their history; with no court of justice in 
their midst to which conflicting claims and angry dis- 
putes might be referred, and no frowning gaol for the 

6 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

reception of the criminal. Nor were they needed. 
Few contentions probably were known and the voice 
of Society, though newly formed in this Southern 
home, was potent enough to silence the voice of the 
blasphemer and make evil-minded man pause in his 
ways." If natural laws were to prevail under these 
circumstances, the good seed, brought from the old 
world, winnowed from chaff and noxious weeds and 
dropped in virgin soil, would bring forth an abundant 
harvest of good quahties. 

The Welsh were a branch of the great Celtic race 
which belonged to the same stock from which the 
Greeks, Romans, Germans, and English descended. 
They came long before the Christian era to France and 
the British Isles, and from time to time they migrated 
in great bodies eastward and became the terror of 
Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor. They made good sol- 
diers before whom even a Roman army could not stand, 
but being deficient in political capacity, unattached to 
their native soil and too vain to labor with their own 
hands, they were sorry citizens, who preferred military 
and plundering expeditions to the quietude of peaceful 
pursuits. "They shook all the states," says Mommsen, 
"but nowhere did they make a great state or develop 
a distinctive culture of their own," a parallel to which is 
found in the misfortune of the Irishman, who has fought 
for so many countries and so unsuccessfully for his own 
Erin. Many generations passed and many lessons in 
the school of experience were learned, before the Welsh 
became noted for virtues which were conspicuously 
absent from their brave Celtic ancestors. As to the 
causes of some of the changes for the better, the remarks 
found in the biography of J. Glancy Jones, a descendant 

7 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

of a Welsh family in Pennsylvania, are luminous and 
to the point: 

"The little remnant of the ancient Britons who had 
sought the security of the mountains of Wales, when 
they were driven out of England by the Anglo-Saxons, 
had been drawn closer by their adversities. They 
became more clannish in their mountain fastnesses, 
more tenacious of their Celtic language, their Celtic 
customs, their Celtic traditions; and when their descend- 
ants went up to London, with their hearts full of this 
clannishness, to confer with William Penn (himself of 
Welsh extraction) about the newly acquired lands in 
America, it was to secure from him the assurance that 
if they went there, they were to have their bounds and 
limits to themselves, within which all causes, quarrels, 
crimes, and titles were to be tried and wholly deter- 
mined by officers, magistrates and juries in their own 
language, and by those who were equals, in the same 
manner as they had enjoyed their liberties and privileges 
in the land of their nativity, under the crown of Eng- 
land. They impressed upon him, with all the vigor of 
their clannish strength, that they desired to be by them- 
selves in this new and strange land, to live together as 
a civil society without the intrusion of strangers, to 
endeavor to decide all controversies and debates in a gos- 
pel order, and not to entangle themselves with laws in an 
unknown tongue; as also to preserve their language that 
they might ever keep correspondence with their friends 
in the land of their nativity. . . . They knew how 
the English and the Saxons had supplanted their ances- 
tors, the Britons, by force, and brought with them to 
the shores of England and firmly planted there, to the 
exclusion of everything else, the social and political life 

8 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

of their Teutonic fatherland; and they thought it would 
be an easy matter for them peacefully, in a new country, 
to establish a Welsh Colony, where they might retain 
the cherished associations of their old home and yet 
reap the advantages of this new and promising land. 
. . . They had nothing but logs to build their houses 
with, for that part of the Welsh Tract was the 'back 
country.' Many of the houses had not even locks or 
bolts on their doors. There were not many roads and 
the few they had were little better than trails. . . . 
The country was rich in soil, climate and beautiful 
scenery, but the landscapes were mild compared with 
the bolder landscapes of Wales. The trees were fine, 
game was abundant and though the conditions were as 
healthy as could be expected in a newly broken country, 
it was not long before there were many graves. 

"Though descended from a brave and warlike people, 
these Welshmen were devoted to the arts of peace. 
They were a contented and prosperous little community. 
They were particular in their personal appearance and 
in their linen. The men dressed in buckskin breeches 
and plush coats, and the women in cambric, fine bon- 
nets and silk. They were clannish and impatient of 
the intrusion of strangers. 

"The isolation of the little group of Welshmen in- 
creased their strength, made them more self-reliant, 
inter-dependent and concentrative. It developed their 
strong sense of brotherhood. It made this httle valley 
the nursery of strong men who went out from it in later 
years to make their mark in the world. So deeply did 
the strong race that once dwelt there make its impres- 
sion upon the land, that though they are gone, their 
unfading memory still fingers there, intermingled with 

9 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

the sweet fragrance of its fields, and inseparably associ- 
ated with the native beauty, fertile stretches and grace- 
ful undulating lowlands. 

"They were an emotional, proud, elastic people, 
with a quick eye for the beautiful and a strong instinct 
of nobility. They loved nature and everything beauti- 
ful that was to be found in it. To their romance and 
their fancy, they united courage and the more prac- 
tical forms of life. Nothing of the narrowness of fa- 
naticism was to be found in them. They were broad in 
their aims and their actions. What we see therefore, 
in their uneventful lives, is not unimportant. It be- 
comes valuable to the biographer, when he seeks in it, 
back through the dim vista of time, the origin of many 
of those fine qualities that appear afterwards in remote 
generations of their descendants." 

An appreciative visitor to the original site and 
neighborhood of the Welsh colony on the Pedee can 
heartily assent to one of these statements: "So deeply 
did the strong race that once dwelt there make its 
impression upon the land, that though they are gone, 
their unfading memory still lingers there, intermingled 
with the sweet fragrance of its fields, and inseparably 
associated with the native beauty, fertile stretches and 
graceful undulating lowlands"; but in respect to cloth- 
ing, it may be surmised that the Welsh on the Pedee 
did not indulge in "buckskin breeches and plush coats 
and the women in cambric, fine bonnets and silk," or 
that they were at first richly rewarded for their toils. 
They did not suffer for food or other necessaries, but 
their means of making money were so limited that they 
confessed in their fourth year that they were too poor 
to pay the cost of running out and deeding their land. 

10 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

The Council at Charleston, to encourage them, offered 
a bounty of five pounds in currency for each barrel of 
flour weighing two hundred pounds they brought to 
the city. 

In all other respects the delineation of the forests, 
houses, and characteristics of the Welsh in Pennsyl- 
vania shows that the South Carolina Colony was a 
chip from the same block. These emigrants from wild 
Wales and Pennsylvania transplanted themselves on 
the wild Pedee, which they found adapted to agriculture 
and stock raising, leading pursuits in their mother 
country, and developed their civilization, Welsh in its 
texture, but modified by contact with hospitable and 
worthy neighbors. They were no doubt familiar with 
the prophecy, more than a thousand years old, uttered 
about their island home, whose name, like its territory, 
shrunk up from GuaUia, Walha to Wales: 

"Their Lord they shall praise 
Their Tongue they shall keep; 
Their lands they shall lose 
Except wild Wales." 

But in the new world they were to lose their tongue and 
become a part of that English army which, with axe 
and plough as weapons, helped to wrest the new world 
from the French and the Spanish. 

There were no great men in the company which first 
settled on the east side of the Pedee, but their descend- 
ants have shown that the pioneers were men and women 
of sturdy virtues and no mean talents. They built and 
graced the log cabins which dotted the river margin, 
made them centres of domestic virtue and happiness, 
and filled their humble spheres of duty to their offspring 

11 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

and, better than they knew, to the state. Their last 
resting place is still pointed out, where they lie in un- 
marked graves, overgrown with weeds, overflowed in 
the great freshets, and forgotten almost as completely 
as the pater noster they used to repeat in their own 
dialect. 

Sources: Logan's History of Upper South Carolina, 
Gregg's History of the Old Cheraws, and Benedict's 
History of the Baptists, original in their contents; 
Jones' Biography of J. Glancy Jones, and Woodward's 
Expansion of the British Empire. 



12 



CHAPTER II 

AMALGAMATION, CHARACTERISTICS AND THE FAMILY 

THE settlements of Welsh, English, Scotch, Irish, 
French and German, dotted here and there, 
were to expand and cover the whole state and 
use one universal language. It was history repeating 
itself. Emigrants to a new country from closely allied 
races, or speaking dialects of the same language, lose 
their inveterate antipathy and, after two or three gen- 
erations, amalgamate so completely by intermarriage 
that the children of later generations have the blood 
of three or four races coursing in their veins. The 
descendants of these early immigrants still make up a 
large part of the 98 per cent, of the present native-born 
population. None of the branches of these new settlers 
remained unmixed. Even the Welsh, with their segre- 
gating tendencies ingrained for centuries, could not 
continue in their separateness and clannishness; but in 
the intermixture along the Pedee they remained the 
prepotent factor. Their fine qualities and discreet 
cohesive power were all in their favor; and they were 
fortunate in their amalgamation with excellent incomers 
from allied stocks.* 

*Editor John E. Williams of the American Pioneer said in 1843: "If you will look 
around and see the Joneses, Evanses, Thomases, Johnses, Edmundses, Enoches, Wil- 
liamses, Cadwalladers, Davises, Jameses, Robertses, Owenses, Phiiipses, or any Chris- 
tian name used as a surname, you more than conjecture the extraction to be Welsh; 

13 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

As emigrants they differed in motives and in character 
from the Pilgrim Fathers, "who emigrated in search of 
the freedom of worship denied them in their own coun- 
try." Nor were they Hke the settlers on Massachu- 
setts Bay, "where the public opinion was intolerant by 
conviction and neither politician nor pastor raised a 
voice for freedom of worship, where a question of church 
order or biblical controversy was the chief concern of 
life." The Welsh differed also from the colony at 
Charles Town with its classes of mixed population and 
unequal opportunities and from Maryland and Provi- 
dence, the former accepting religious toleration, the 
latter restricting the magistrate to the province of 
politics. 

They were like the Pilgrims in having "taste mainly 
for country life, in being inured to self-denial, thrift 
and hard work, in having common aims and beliefs, 
animated by high motives and accustomed to act to- 
gether for their joint welfare"; and they agreed with 
the men of Massachusetts in their valuation of learning, 
though it led not to taxation for the schools but to a 
cultivated private liberality. In short the men and 
women on the Pedee were noble by nature. Their 
history was marred by no religious fanaticism which led 
to burning witches, hanging Quakers or beating dissent- 
ing preachers; nor by political inequalities made in their 
own interests. It was a place where Freedom had its 
sway unconfmed save by the moderation of sane public 
opinion. Had the Welsh in larger numbers settled in a 

just as sure as son is English, Mac is Scottish, O and Fitj, Irish, yan, Dutch, and De 
and La French." He gave his fellow-Welshman the name of a fearnaught, restless, 
go-ahead people. The Celtic people were easily moved en masse and their amalga- 
mation on the Pedee balanced that tendency with the Teutonic sense of individuality, 
or the Anglican love of personal liberty. 

14 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

strategic position like Massachusetts and leavened the 
new world, the history of the United States might have 
been a more attractive study. 

In their social relations there was freedom within 
legitimate bounds. In the family, the father was the 
legal and nominal head and in field and farm he was 
master and director. His primacy in the family rested 
also on a moral basis. He took to money making as 
naturally as birds do to the air; and behind all his 
planning and industry were the love of his wife and 
children and respect for the community's name and 
welfare. To the wife as the weaker vessel was ac- 
corded the highest place in the heart and home and as 
mother she shone in the graces of her daughters and in 
the manly virtues of her husband and sons. The 
mother and the daughters, to whom all paid deference, 
belonged to the household and were therefore excused 
from labor on the roads, sitting on juries and from 
military service. The men belonged to the state as 
well as to the family and were liable in any emergency 
to be called out from home. In the earlier times the 
sons were sometimes more carefully educated than the 
daughters, whose training in reading, writing, and 
arithmetic and comely conduct was a sufficient female 
adornment. The authority of the parents as a rule 
was exercised with discretion, and in not a few families 
there was a subordination of parts, due to strength and 
weakness, affection and reverence, that left no room 
for friction. Such harmony makes a family become 
an organism, with its members sympathetically united 
and contributing each its share to the efficiency and 
happiness of the whole. In a similar arrangement of 
its members, an apostle and a pagan philosopher saw, 

15 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

one the possibility of a perfect church, the other of a 
perfect state. 

Underneath the family and a part of its possessions 
was a class of colored dependents or slaves, varying in 
number from one to several hundred. Their habitation 
was generally in the yard or in small houses conveni- 
ently situated near the "big house." There was in 
consequence a division of labor in the master's family. 
The mistress with her chosen female servants cared 
for the house and table, the milking, and making of 
cloth and garments for the establishment. Large 
numbers of cows filled the pen at night and furnished 
milk and butter as well as beef, hides, and yearhngs to 
be sold in the market. The spinning wheel made music 
before the piano appeared in the home, and prepared 
wool and cotton for the loom. Excepting in the color 
of the slaves, Penelope in Homer's Odyssey, three 
thousand years ago, would have been at home on the 
Pedee with her industrious servants. 

It was the master's function to plan and plant such 
crops and direct the labor of his "hands" in a way that 
the whole family might be self-supporting and that 
there might be some compensation for supervision. 
Subservient to this purpose, nearby the home were built 
blacksmith and carpenter shops, where skilled artisans 
made themselves useful in rainy weather and in emer- 
gencies. Early in the nineteenth century, the cotton 
gin and screw became a necessary adjunct for the 
preparation of the cotton for sale and exportation. 
Prior to the appearance of the gin, a flock of sheep and 
a patch of cotton, with its seed picked out by hand, 
furnished the material for the use of the spinner and 
the weaver. 

16 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

The woods were kept stocked with swine and the crop 
of acorns, sometimes killed by the frost, was watched 
by the farmers with the same interest they noticed 
their growing corn. When abundant, the mast made 
the shotes sleek for the fattening pen and less corn 
needful in fitting them for slaughter on some crisp 
December morning, when the whole force congregated 
to convert by laborious processes the living rooters into 
palatable pork. The hams in the Gheraw precinct 
attained a celebrity and retained it until cotton and 
negroes lessened the amount for sale. As late as 1812 
it was sold in Charleston, "in small handy casks of 200 
pounds, suitable for family use." It was pronounced 
to be "of superior quality, well saltpetred and war- 
ranted sound." 

A full smokehouse was a necessity for the backwoods 
paterfamilias and some of them continued in the 
provident mood to the end of slavery. In the forties 
and earlier Kentuckians had estabhshed a hog route to 
Greenville, South Carohna, with stations ten miles 
apart, along which were driven fifty to eighty thousand 
fat swine, averaging 300 pounds, to be distributed 
among the cotton planters. 

Among the crops outside of cotton, corn was the great 
staple. The vine followed the Greeks, wheat the 
Romans and cotton the Arabs (Humbolt). Maize or 
Indian corn followed the Indian, while his successor, the 
white man, in one part or another of his great country, 
has been followed by all the great crops. Wheat has 
furnished the best bread, but corn, being prolific and 
cosmopolitan, is the most valuable of all the cereals. 
It is the gift of a beneficent Creator who designed that 
the provident man and his beasts should live in abun- 

17 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

dance. The intelligent master said in substance to his 
slaves: "You must labor and be obedient. In return 
for your labor, I give you food and raiment and care for 
your health. You shall not beg in your old age nor fill 
a pauper's grave." The great majority of the slaves 
were light-hearted and chafed not at their lot. They 
lived in the present, were social, musical, and even 
hilarious where noise was not forbidden. Their wants 
were few and simple, and having no anxiety for the fu- 
ture they received at birth the ability to say what cost 
the apostle Paul much tribulation, "I have learned in 
whatever state I am therein to be content." But there 
were evil masters who sinned greatly against their hu- 
man chattels, and there were both men and women 
slaves who were insubordinate, not in the interest of 
their freedom, but out of motives not far from brutish, 
causing severe punishment. The runaways graduated 
out of this latter class, both male and female; but as the 
years passed and they outlived their native wildness, 
absconding slaves became relatively fewer in number. 
The lot of the slave under white or colored superintend- 
ents and in families ambitious to increase their posses- 
sions was harder than that of the servants who lived 
under the direct supervision of well-to-do masters. 
Such was the family on the Pedee and like it on an 
extended scale was the community. 



18 



CHAPTER III 

SLAVERY 

SLAVERY had its place in the industrial develop- 
ment of the world. Whether right or wrong, 
the Creator made the stronger men and animals 
with such instincts that they used and still use the 
weaker for their own advantage. On the supposition 
that the inferior was made for the benefit of the superior, 
man harnessed the dog, ox, horse, mule, and with Dar- 
winian philosophy yoked his weaker fellowmen and 
those least removed from the "missing link," to do 
his own work and bidding; and as he developed in men- 
tal capacity, he utilized the wind, water, steam and 
electricity to take the place of menial and animal labor. 
Inventions and labor-saving devices and the leavening 
of society with altruistic sentiments, have aided in 
changing one phase of slavery for another and gener- 
ally of a milder form. Great Britain freed her chattel 
slaves but continued to hold so many millions of free- 
men tributary that it was said at the time for every 
person in England there were two hundred and fifty 
tributary subjects; and when four millions of slaves 
valued at two billions of dollars were freed in 1865, the 
money power which made emancipation possible, sub- 
stituted for it, in its own interests, an annual tribute 
from the whole country, amounting in the best years 

19 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

to a sum equal to the total value of the manumitted 
slaves; and the masters of slaves became the masters 
of free laborers. 

It cannot be claimed that slavery in the past has been 
incompatible with the highest civihzation. Athens, 
the home of many slaves, not Africans but men and 
women of better races, has remained for more than two 
millenniums the intellectual and artistic teacher of 
every later generation; and Rome, where the legal 
relation of the wife, son and daughter to the father of 
the family was the same as that of the slave, is still the 
instructor in pohtics and jurisprudence. In the days of 
American slavery, the downfall of Rome was confidently 
attributed to her slave system, but to-day other faddists 
fmd the cause of her fall in the hookworm introduced 
from Africa or in the loss of the best men in the con- 
tinuous warfare, or in the urbanization of the people. 

It was found out by the Europeans engaged in the 
business of enslaving their less civihzed fellows, that 
the Africans were the ablest physically and the most 
suitably endowed by nature to be submissive to the 
rule of a master. They soon learned to wear the yoke, 
adapt themselves to their sphere and become attached 
to their masters and mistresses. The Welsh had no 
scruples in reference to slavery before they left their 
northern homes, and now ensconced in their forest 
possessions they soon found these sable laborers useful 
in field work and in tending their cattle. Slaves were 
brought up the river and from more northern colonies 
by immigrants or in exchange for cattle and farm prod- 
ucts; but the upper Pedee lost its proportion of the 
25,000 carried olY by the British in the Revolution. 
The census of 1790 reported that there were 140,000 

20 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

whites and 108,805 negroes in South Carohna. The 
hmitation of the period 1788 to 1808 as the lawful 
time for the importation of slaves, made the trafTic 
lively among the European and northern ship owners. 
In November, 1803, the legislature of South Carolina 
removed the restrictions against the trade, and within 
five hours after the news reached Charleston, two large 
British Guineamen came into the city and sold their 
cargoes of human freight. In the next four years 
40,000 Africans landed at Charleston to be distributed 
over the state and as far west as the Mississippi. To 
be strictly accurate, from January 1, 1804, to December 
31, 1807, thirty-nine thousand and seventy-five Africans 
were brought into Charleston. Of this number 21,027 
were brought in by foreigners. Citizens whose states 
had repudiated slavery imported 14,605; the South 
brought in 3,443. Of the 202 vessels which brought 
cargoes, Britain owned 70, Charleston 61, Rhode Island 
59; of 202 consignees, 13 were natives of Charleston, 88 
of Rhode Island, 91 of Britain, 10 of France. The in- 
vestments offered by this traffic depleted the banks at 
Charleston and stretched credit generally to the snapping 
point. Negroes had also been introduced into the north- 
ern colonies but their unprofitableness gave slavery an 
easy death or caused them to be sold in climates where 
their labor was more valuable. 

The Quakers were the first to oppose slavery from 
humane considerations. There was a settlement of 
them in Newberry District, which suffered in the Revo- 
lution. Early in the new century, they numbered five 
hundred, owned farms, supported a pastor and were 
excellent citizens; but after the San Domingo massacres 
they were made restless by a visiting minister, Zachary 

21 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

Dicks, who predicted that similar massacres would take 
place among slaveholders in this country. They sold 
out and went to Ohio, where their descendants, opposed 
to war, doubtless helped to make it necessary for Presi- 
dent Lincoln to send as voters into Ohio, soldiers from 
New England and other places, to defeat Vallandigham, 
the people's choice for governor, and thereby to bring 
it about that "a government of the people, for the 
people and by the people might not perish from the 
earth!" Several families of the Quakers remained in 
the state, one of which furnished a Chief Justice and 
— a thing of more value now — the author of the "An- 
nals of Newberry and of the Bench and Bar of South 
CaroUna." 

It has often been claimed that slavery hurt the master 
more than the slave who had been dragged unwillingly 
from his haunts of ignorance and superstition and 
brought into contact with civilization. There was 
some truth in the assertion. The unskilled laborer 
hindered the use of labor-saving machinery. Less 
progress in agriculture and less diversification in the 
pursuits of life and less accumulation of property were 
the inevitable results.* The negro was three-fifths of a 

*The slave was dear to the owner, but profitable to the state. He had to be bought 
at a high price, fed, clothed, cared for in sickness and in old age and buried when his 
toils were over; and the more cotton he made the less it brought. The master had cog- 
nizance of the petty thefts and misdemeanors and corrected them at home and not in 
the courts. In June, i860, Georgia with a population of 43,684 white illiterates and 
500,000 slaves, had 101 in jail, but Massachusetts with 46,262 illiterates had i,i6i in 
jails. (Dodd.) The difference in the expense of a southern government prior to 1861 
and that of a free state did not end here. The state government of South Carolina, 
for instance, was a model of economy and efficiency and in freedom from graft. 
Wealthy candidates for office, prompted by the love of honor and success, often spent 
large sums of money, but they would have parted with their right hands sooner than 
stoop to crooked ways of replenishing their coffers. Avarice was not a dominating 
motive. 

22 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

man as a slave, and as a freedman he retains about 
the same relation to the white laborer. As a domestic 
servant he had no equal. If slavery had not been 
interwoven with politics it, too, would have found an 
end by euthanasia, the easy death, which was coming 
by the unprofitableness of unskilled labor in the pro- 
duction of agricultural products. Slaves had for the 
most part to live in the country. There were no large 
cities in the South, about fifteen-sixteenths of the 
population being on the farms. Economists of that 
day calculated that thirty-five or forty to the square 
mile was about as large a population as slave labor 
could support. Delaware and parts of Maryland and 
Virginia had already approached this average, and slave 
labor could scarcely support itself. When the popula- 
tion reached 110 to the square mile, men, whether bond 
or free, could not support themselves. And on this basis 
certain economists calculated that the South by 1887 
would average 40 to the square mile which would make 
slave labor of little value, and by 1926 the increased 
population would make it a positive burden. Whether 
their figures were right or wrong, the general conclusion 
was correct and slavery would have found its end by 
degrees, with less loss to the masters, and more profit 
and happiness to the freedmen had it been suffered to 
run its own course under the Constitution of the United 
States, according to the original "scrap of paper." 

The invention of the cotton gin multiphed the value 
of the slave and made him a fixture in the cotton belt. 
It was cotton and not the negro, or rather it was cotton 
with the negro, that made too many Southern farmers 
invest all their earnings in the plantation and hands. 
Indirectly the negro was in the way of manufactures 

23 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

and, therefore, of the poorer white famihes who would 
have been employed in them. Prejudice against 
slavery sent the immigrants in great numbers to in- 
crease the wealth and population of the free states; 
but it also acted as a preservative against a European 
inundation of the Southern States and preserved that 
section for the descendants of the first settlers. Helper, 
a Southern writer in the late fifties, endeavored to show 
what an incubus slavery was to the South, and his effort 
was rewarded by the sale of near one million copies of 
his work. And in a higher realm than money matters, 
a master or any stronger man suffers, when for any rea- 
son he is cruel to man or beast. His relationship to re- 
fractory or rebellious slaves was the same in essence as 
that between a government and its rebels. Both the 
master and the government have the same temptations 
to be cruel in the exercise of physical force and to show 
that they are no nearer the golden rule than their far- 
off ancestors. Slaveholding was imperialism in small 
change and it placed in the will of the master a power 
which few men and fewer governments have been found 
sane and wise enough not to abuse. 

An unmoral, not to say immoral, race in the midst of 
a superior one has its points of unwholesome contact. 
Inferior in morals and in station, it is bound to exert a 
deteriorating influence. The three great impulses to 
human activity are the desire of food, of drink, and 
love (Plato); and their excesses are called gluttony, 
drunkenness and licentiousness. The last flourished 
among the Africans not less than among the more 
cultivated races. This evil and gambling have ever 
been evidences of the unity of the human family; but it 
was the interest of the master and in his power to pro- 

24 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

tect his chattels from the other two vices. Had the 
late comers from Africa had free access to intoxicants, 
they would have degenerated like the Indians. The 
allowance of food kept them strong and free from dis- 
eases to which free men were liable. In trials made 
with Irish ditchers who were among the best white 
laborers in antebellum times, as well as voracious 
eaters, the negroes' superiority, where physical strength 
counted, was easily established. 

The leisure afforded the master and his family was 
not all wasted. It led them to cultivate their minds 
and morals, and become more useful in society. The 
bookstores found their best customers at the South, 
where the leisure and responsibility as imperialists caused 
them to cultivate hospitality and a high sense of honor. 
Their very station made them statesmen. Feudalism had 
feudal obligations and it was this as well as descent from 
a great race which cooperated in making it possible for 
Senator Hoar of Massachusetts to pay the Southern 
gentleman a tribute as generous as it was unexpected: 
"They have an aptness for command, which makes the 
Southern gentleman, wherever he goes, not a peer only 
but a prince. They have the best of them and the 
most of them inherited from the great race from which 
they came the sense of duty and the instinct of honor as 
no other people on the face of the earth. They are 
lovers of home. They have not the mean traits which 
grow elsewhere in places where money making is the 
chief end of Hfe. They have above all and giving value 
to all, that supreme and superb constancy, which with- 
out regard to personal ambition and without yielding 
to the temptations of wealth, without getting tired and 
without getting diverted, can pursue a great public 

25 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

object, in and out, year after year, and generation after 
generation." Where his lot was cast with a tolerable 
master, the African was not so unhappy as the corres- 
ponding free stratum in other countries. The ground 
for this statement is ample, found in contemporary 
anti-slavery writings, and from the testimony of some 
living ex-slaves who look back on slavery days as better 
than those enjoyed in freedom. A colored speaker 
declared before the Southern Baptist Convention in 
1914 that he would prefer to be a slave of a Southern 
master than be a freeman in Africa. From the days of 
Abraham down to the memory of men still living slavery 
flourished, being recognized by pagan, Jewish, and 
Christian rehgions; but there was something unique in 
American slavery. Slavery in other cases meant degra- 
dation; but to an African it was the road to elevation. 
The first steps of improvement — industry, obedience 
to authority, and provident forethought — were taught 
him, but his servitude was too short for the thorough 
inculcation of these lessons. It was long enough to be 
helpful and to bring to light some of his better traits. 
Sincere attachments between the servants and their 
masters and mistresses were frequent and many of them 
continued after their relationship ceased. In the 
settlements where wealthy men kept a colony in the 
yard, an aristocratic sentiment appeared as in great 
Roman famihes and made them look down upon the 
less favored freemen as ''poor white trash." Even 
the free negro was by some reckoned in a lower scale. 
In a quarrel (heard by W. C. Preston) between a freed- 
man and a slave, the latter's parting shot was, "What 
are you anyhow? You are nothing but a free nigger. 
You have no massa." 

26 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

It was said by a Greek poet that a slave was only half 
a man. And yet the African half-man illustrated in 
one respect the stoic maxims, "Wherever a man can 
live, he can live well"; "Very little is necessary to 
live happily." Even in servitude, there was developed 
and made manifest one racial virtue in times when no 
white race could have resisted the temptation to for- 
swear fidelity to his master. When Great Britain 
began the Revolutionary contest, her representatives 
were able to incite the Indians to war on the Colonies; 
but the emancipation proclamation and the opportun- 
ity to enlist in the Union armies found little response 
among the great body of slaves whose masters were not 
made refugees by the invading army. It was in their 
power to light up fires from Virginia to Texas, but 
instead of that natural course, they made provisions 
both for home use and for the army, built the breast- 
works to defend their masters and with the greatest 
fidelity protected their unguarded families at home. 
When the tidings of the burning of Columbia reached 
the north, Philip Brooks, the great northern preacher, 
exclaimed, "Isn't Sherman a dandy!" but the un- 
sophisticated negro looked upon the undreamed of 
sights with mouth wide open, just as he did when his 
master used to read to him about the Beasts in Revela- 
tion! A part of the race was in contact with the 
splendors of the Pharaohs and might have profited by 
the civilization of Greece or Rome or later nations, but 
no part of the negro race has ever threatened with vi- 
olence a civilized state or built up a civilization of its 
own; and to-day the race rises by imitation of the older 
one, and not yet appreciably from native forces devel- 
oping within their own activities. 

27 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

Fifty years have passed since the negroes were freed 
by no virtue or fault of their own. No wars were ever 
fought to free slaves ; but laws as powerful as gravitation 
have worked silently to emancipate both men and 
women. The catastrophe in 1860-65 was wound up 
in the friction between two great parties — centripetal 
and centrifugal — which were trying, the one to make 
the federal government stronger than the states, the 
other in trying to keep the states unimpaired in their 
functions. The freeing of the slaves was done in the 
passions excited by the war, and to the exigency of 
party politics must be credited the raising of the 
African from the state of slavery to that of citizen, 
above their former masters. It is interesting to note 
how some of the thoughtful European scholars are 
thinking on the subject. Hugo Miinsterberg of Ger- 
many, now in Harvard University, says in his book on 
"Americans": 

"Europe has so far considered only one feature of 
the negro question — that of slavery. All Europe read 
'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and thought the difficulty solved 
as soon as the negro was freed from his chains and the 
poorest negro came into his human right of freedom. 
Europe was not aware that in this wise still greater 
problems were created, and that greater springs of 
misery and misfortune for the negro there took their 
origin. . . . But all students of the South beheve 
that this hatred (between the races) has come about 
wholly since the negro was declared free. The slave 
was faithful and devoted to his master, who took care 
of him. ... A patriarchal condition prevailed 
in the South before the war, in spite of the representa- 
tions made by political visionaries. Indeed it is some- 

28 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

times difficult not to doubt whether it was necessary 
to do away with slavery so suddenly and forcibly: 
whether a good deal of self-respect would not have been 
saved on both sides, and endless hatred, embitterment, 
and misery spared, if the Northern states had left the 
negro question to itself, to be solved through organic 
rather than mechanical means. 

"It is too late to philosophize on this point: doctri- 
narianism has shaped the situation otherwise. The arms 
of the Civil War have decided in favor of the North. 
It is dismal, but it must be said that the actual events 
of the ensuing years of peace have decided rather in 
favor of the view of the South." 

In speaking to a Boston audience. Prof. J. P. Ma- 
haffy, professor of Greek in Dublin University, said: 
"That the fact that all the Greek world held slaves is 
another antiquated standpoint, which prevents them 
from being fit teachers for modern nations. But to 
me that question does not appear so simple, and perhaps 
with the experience of the past forty years, even the 
American public that has time for reflection may have 
some doubts on the matter. So great a thinker as 
Aristotle felt quite clear about it ; he believed there were 
inferior races, fit only to be controlled, not to control, 
and he held it was for their good when they were coerced 
by the superior intelhgence and education of the 
Greeks." When the powerful brute force of one side 
put an end to slavery, a Northern philanthropic element 
lavished its money freely that the ignorant slaves might 
be educated citizens; but in this, too, the ardor has cooled 
itself by actual results. The pot boiling over extin- 
guishes the fire beneath. A philosophical reason for it 
may be found in Herbert Spencer's "Psychology": 

29 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

"One of the reasons assigned in the United States for 
not educating negro children with white children has 
been that after a certain age they *do not correspond- 
ingly advance in learning, their intellect being apparently 
incapable of being cultured beyond a particular point.' 
But this statement, which might be suspected of bias, 
agrees with that made by Sir Samuel Baker, who says: 
'In childhood, I beheve the negro to be in advance in 
intellectual quickness of the white child of a similar 
age, but the mind does not expand — it promises fruit — 
but does not ripen,' " and more in amplification of the 
theory. 

Sources: O'Neall's Annals of Newberry, Judge 
Smith's Speech on Slavery, December, 1820; the 
Southern Quarterly Review, 1846, Woodward's Expan- 
sion of the British Empire, Thomas' Reminiscences, 
Winkler in International Review, 1874, and Mrs. Caro- 
line Whitman's Family Reminiscences. 



30 



CHAPTER IV 

THE WELSH NECK BAPTIST CHURCH AND ST. DAVID'S 

SOCIETY 

THE allotment of lands in Graven County, in 
which the Welsh occupied the central and 
strategic position, was made in clear daylight, 
and notwithstanding the fires, earthquakes and wars 
which devasted the City by the Sea, the records are 
still worth the trouble of investigation. George H 
was the grantor, and names of grantees are yet preserved 
in the archives of the state and partly in the Charleston 
library. The provincial government offered induce- 
ments to prospective settlers and treated them with 
liberality and exercised patience when dues were slow 
to come in; but it was either unable or unwilling to 
extend the protection of the laws over the distant 
frontiers. The machinery of the government was 
centrally located, and some twenty-five years elapsed 
while the frontiersmen were neither under nor outside 
of the government at Charles Town. 

It was a situation in which moral and religious senti- 
ment of the community by its mere weight served, 
while in this isolation, as a good substitute for govern- 
ment. Five years after their log huts had been raised, 
the Welsh met in the house of John Jones* and in due 

*John Jones lived on and east of the Pedee; William Hughes was his neighbor on 
the east. He got three deeds for 750 acres in 1743 and 1744. 

31 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

time their gatherings were transferred to the meeting 
house built by the church and community. The Welsh 
Neck Baptist Church then became and remained for 
nearly a century by common consent something like an 
established church in the old country. In Rhode 
Island, the colony most like that on the Pedee in its 
general features, unrestricted freedom degenerated into 
loquacity and verbal dissensions; but on the Pedee 
where there was a strong "instinct of nobility," able 
men of other faiths either gave them up or compromised 
their differences and cast in their lot with their Welsh 
brethren. In the day of its widest influence, it had no 
connection with the magistrate, yet its pastor was 
called upon to preach before the Planters' Club, the ses- 
sion sermon before the opening of the court, and on 
other patriotic occasions. The church shared to some 
extent in the strictness of disciphne common to the 
times, but in no other way was its influence felt to be 
harsh or stern. Only once in the history of the Cheraw 
District was a minister beaten for preaching the gospel 
as he understood it. One Rev. Joseph Cates was 
severely handled before the Revolution by a magistrate, 
but the violence stirred up so much indignation that the 
officer felt that it was necessary to make bad morals 
the ground of the castigation. (Benedict.) The church 
was a light shining in the darkness and it became not 
only an uplifter and transformer of the immediate 
vicinity, but also a mother church out of which went 
before the dawn of the new century such organizations 
as Cashaway, Cape Fear, Lynch's Creek, Cheraw, 
Beauty Spot, and others. 

The time came at last when moral suasion and public 
opinion were not sufficient to restrain the evil men who 

32 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

were crowding in upon the unprotected law-abiding 
citizens. The good people reported their grievances 
to the government and petitioned for relief; but when 
entreaties were unavailing, the best people in the 
county came together, considered the situation and 
formed companies called Regulators who made it warm 
for the emboldened horse thieves, negro stealers, and 
other evildoers. The activity of the Regulators awoke 
the slumbering authorities in Charles Town to the fact 
that they were ignorant of the real situation on the 
Pedee. The machinery of government as a result of 
official investigation was extended over the men who 
had been forced to protect themselves. It was not a 
government of the mob on the Pedee; that arises like 
miasma, when the laws are lax and law-breakers are 
unpunished. It was an organization to supply the 
place of no laws and it fell to pieces as soon as the people 
saw constituted authority over them. They acted in 
obedience to the law of self-preservation, in falling 
back as a last resort on the sovereignty of the people. 
A coahtion of law-abiding citizens against any class of 
irresponsible evildoers who respect nothing but superior 
force, is always in order. 

A court house and jail was built at the Bluff, about 
1768, and a judge and jury sat in their midst dispensing 
justice. It was a new era to the colony, when the 
resumption of a constitutional government closed the 
time of insecurity for life and property. The troubles 
with the mother country were now beginning. The 
Stamp act and the declaration of the mother country 
that it had a right to tax the colonies were Uke an 
angry cloud rising above the horizon. In the fall 
court of 1774, Judge Wilham Henry Drayton's ad- 

33 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

dress* to the juries and their responses, place Society Hill 
in the very front rank of the revolutionary patriots. The 
charge of the judge attracted the attention of the people 
in this province and in England. A part of it was couched 
in these ringing words : " English people cannot be taxed, 
nay they cannot be bound by any laws, unless by their 
consent, expressed by themselves, or their representa- 
tives of their own election. The Colony was settled by 
EngUsh subjects; by a people from England herself; a 
people who brought over with them, who planted in the 
colony, and who transmitted to posterity the invaluable 
right of Englishmen — rights which no time, no contract, 
no climate, can diminish. Thus possessed of such 
rights — by all the ties which mankind hold most dear 
and sacred; your reverence to your ancestors; your 
love to your own interest; your tenderness to your 
posterity; by the lawful obligation of your oath, I 
charge you to do your duty; to maintain the laws, the 
rights, the constitution of your country, even at the 
hazard of your lives and fortune." 

The petit jury returned "our warmest acknowledge- 
ments for so constitutional a charge at this alarming 
crisis, when our liberties are attacked and our properties 
invaded by the claim and attempt of the British parlia- 

*In his "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," Jefferson Davis refers to 
this address as an "exhibition of judicial purity and independence" like to that exhib- 
ited by Judge Aldrich in 1867, when he being ordered to revoke a sentence, replied 
to General Sickles: " 1 do not impose the penalty it is the law, and 1 have no discre- 
tion." When General Canby's orders did not conform to the laws of the state. Judge 
Aldrich called the attention of the grand jury to the conflict. He opened the court, 
read the order suspendng him from office, stated the circumstances and, laying aside 
his gown, directed the sheriff "to let the court stand adjourned while justice is 
stifled." (Vol. 11, p. 744.) In the same volume is a very interesting account of how 
the Federal soldiers treated Rev. Dr. Bachman, in 1865, not far distant from the very 
spot where Judge W. H. Drayton delivered his famous charge and not a hundred 
years later. 

34 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

merit to tax us, and by their edicts to bind us in all 
cases they deem proper; a claim to which we will never 
submit, and an attempt which we are determined to 
oppose at the hazard of our lives and property." 
The Grand Jury was even more outspoken : 
**We present as a grievance of the first magnitude, 
the right claimed by the British parliament to tax us, 
and by their acts bind us in all cases whatsoever. When 
we reflect on our other grievances, they all appear tri- 
fling in comparison with this; for if we may be taxed, 
imprisoned, deprived of life by the force of edicts to 
which neither we nor our constitutional representatives 
have ever assented, no slavery can be more abject than 
ours. . . . This right of being exempted from all 
laws but those enacted with the consent of our repre- 
sentatives of our own election, we deem so essential to 
our freedom, that we are determined to defend it at the 
hazard of our lives and fortunes." 

The story of the Revolution is told in histories, but 
the course of events as they happened on the Pedee is 
narrated more fully in the history of the old Cheraws. 
The men of Craven County, and especially in the cen- 
tral part, stood as if they were one man against the 
invaders and their deadly associates, the tories. They 
hazarded their lives and property in order to be free; 
and an over-ruling Providence smiled upon their efforts. 
The Welsh Neck Church suffered along with the com- 
munity. Her leading member. General Mcintosh, 
had been one of the captains of the Regulators, had 
been the foreman of the grand jury which returned the 
attitude of the British Government as their greatest 
grievance, rose to the rank of brigadier general, and after 
a successful campaign in the swamps of the seacoast 

35 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

went home to give up his Hfe in behalf of his country, 
before CornwaUis' invasion. The patriotism of the 
church is shown not only by the officers, General Mcin- 
tosh and Colonel Hicks, it presented to the service, but 
by its losses in the rank and file including Colonel Abel 
Kolb, the victim of the tories. It is mentioned in the 
records of the church, that of the 220 white members 
only 48 were left in 1793, showing the sad havoc of 
death and the unhappy results of a protracted war. 
(Gregg.) 

One of the first public social organizations was the 
Planters' Club. It began early enough to embrace in 
its membership some of the earliest arrivals in the 
woods, but its object is said to have been social rather 
than instructive in the art of driving the plough. It 
preceded and paved the way for another organization 
which proved to be enduring and eminently useful. 

In 1777 there was a gathering of patriotic citizens 
at the Welsh Neck Church in the interest of popular 
education. Thomas Lide was made chairman. Abel 
Wilds, Robert Lide, Daniel Sparks, Elhanan Win- 
chester, William DeWitt, Evan Pugh, William Henry 
Mills, Benjamin Rogers, George Hicks, Thomas El- 
lerbe, Thomas Evans, Joshua Edwards, Abel Kolb, 
Thomas James and William Pegues were present. 

Alexander Mcintosh was elected president, George 
Hicks, vice-president, Thomas Evans, treasurer, William 
Pegues, secretary. At the second meeting of this St. 
David's Society at the house of Mr. Benjamin William- 
son twenty were present and the rules of the Society 
were read and a subscription paper for raising a sum of 
money for the use of the Society was prepared, the gist 
of which is found in the statement that the Society 

36 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

existed for the purpose of "establishing and founding a 
pubHc school in the Parish for educating youth of all 
Christian denominations in the Latin and Greek 
languages, writing, mathematics, arithmetic and other 
useful branches of hterature, who are not of ability 
without assistance to carry on so useful and necessary 
establishment into effect." 

In the first meeting there were, besides General Mcin- 
tosh and Colonel Hicks, two colonels, two majors, ten 
captains and two ministers present. It was a patriotic 
as well as educational gathering, as the subscription 
paper itself bears witness. Several of the officers and a 
good proportion of the members were also members of 
the Welsh Neck Church and congregation; yet it was 
a district affair, with notices of its meetings posted 
sometimes in five places within its precinct. "It was 
fortunate for the healthy progress of the settlement in 
the Pedee that in the central and most important of them 
all, the religious element so largely prevailed." (Gregg.) 

The platform of the Society was equality of oppor- 
tunity and cooperation in the work of education. They 
knew that there could be no equality in mental equip- 
ment and innate qualities, in the bestowment of which 
nature and not man was supreme; but their interest 
in education showed convictions that every child should 
have a chance to develop its mind and that a people 
worthy to be free from political bondage should also 
free itself from the sway of ignorance, more to be 
dreaded than the domination of Great Britain. 

One hundred and sixty-eight persons subscribed 
8,898* pounds current money for the purpose of building 

*One pound of English currency equalled seven of the Colony, prior to the Revolu- 
tion. There was probably further depreciation in 1777. 

37 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

a house and opening a school. Two names in the list 
attract attention. David Williams is put down twice 
for fifteen pounds. One, it is conjectured, was put 
down by Mrs. Anne Williams, for David Williams 
deceased, and the other for the child, David Rogerson 
Williams, toward whom our narrative is leading. The 
fall of Charleston and the invasion of the state nipped 
the promising undertaking in the bud, only to show 
renewed hfe in April, 1783. From that time, it con- 
tinued more than half a century with as much regularity 
as a paid legislature exhibits in caring for the affairs 
of the state. 

The St. David's Society was composed of all classes, 
irrespective of ecclesiastical divisions. Each member 
paid annual dues and had a voice in electing officers 
for the ensuing year. During the seventeen years prior 
to 1800, Society Hill as it was called earher than 1790 
was stealing a march on less wide awake communities 
by keeping the academy open both for the children of 
the neighborhood and as a boarding school. North and 
South Carohna, including Charleston, sent pupils to the 
Pedee, to enjoy the advantages provided. 

Its long history is free from unsightly divisions of its 
patrons caused too frequently by local jealousies and 
indiscretions. The Society served as a nursery for 
training young men for public service. Judge Wilds, 
WiUiam Falconer, D. R. Williams, John D. Wither- 
spoon, J. N. WiUiams, the Mclvers, Thomas Smith 
and Judge Evans, are among the number who began 
their careers either as students in the Academy or as 
members of the Society. In the effort to help them- 
selves, they had the great happiness which came from 
being an educational lighthouse at home and for ad- 

38 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

jacent sections. "How much in the end other neigh- 
boring communities were indebted to their salutary 
influence, it would be difficult to estimate." (Gregg.) 

Mr. Craig, Mr. Cully, Ezekiel Hitchcock, Samuel 
Wilds, Eli King and Thomas Park were the teachers of 
the eighteenth century. It was not till the time of the 
last mentioned, that the fourteen constitutional rules 
of the Society were recorded in the minutes. The first 
one made it incumbent on all members to meet annually 
on the third Monday in May and elect by ballot a 
president, two wardens, a treasurer, and secretary and 
a standing committee. The second, seventh and eighth 
dealt with the duties of the treasurer and the safeguards 
thrown around the Society's funds. The third referred 
to fines for men elected to office who were either negli- 
gent or refused to serve. The fourth defined the duties 
of the standing committee which included the wardens 
and three members. The fifth rule fixed the fines of 
each officer for non-attendance at $2, of members at $L 
The ninth made twenty shillings the annual dues of 
each member toward paying the expenses of the Society 
and school. The remainder enumerated the causes for 
the exclusion of a member or gave instructions how to 
enter and how to withdraw from its connection. 

The contemporary school with which the St. David's 
Academy can be compared, was the Waddell Academy 
in Western Abbeville. It became a more celebrated 
school because of its learned principal and the great 
men who were instructed in it. The St. David's Acad- 
emy, organized and supported by the St. David's So- 
ciety, situated in the St. David's Parish, grew out of a 
community interest in education, and it is a monument 
to the wisdom and benevolence of the early inhabitants 

39 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

of the upper Pedee. It is worthy of note that the Welsh 
Neck Church was never filled by a star preacher, nor the 
St. David's Academy manned by a brilliant magnetic 
teacher; and yet the steady, intelligent, persevering 
tenacity of a line of good preachers and good teach- 
ers, made the community hke a city set on a hill. It 
stands as a soUtary community in South Carolina in 
which there was a school with a foundation antedating 
the close of the Revolution, conducted by representa- 
tives of the Society which was open to all citizens, pro- 
vided with houses and teachers without state aid. If 
all other knowledge about the upper Pedee had perished, 
the St. David's Academy, like the exhumed ruins of a 
forgotten city, would be an unassailable evidence that 
a high type of civilization once flourished in that region. 

The emigrant from the old world brought his char- 
acter with him; but England predetermined how the 
character of the South Carohnian should be moulded. 
He should be devoted to agriculture, where the land 
was cheap and abundant and where a rich soil, genial 
climate, and government bounties, made it the most 
profitable and independent of callings. He should be 
a money borrower, because it paid to be in debt. Slaves 
bought on time at 10 per cent, interest paid for them- 
selves in three or four years. He should be absorbed 
in his farm and leave politics to the few who were skilled 
in the art of governing. He should be devoted to the 
production of raw materials and leave manufacturing 
and sea-faring to the mother country, which sold arti- 
cles cheaper at Charles Town than at home. He should 
abound in rustic plenty and enjoy the utmost freedom 
at his home and in his own possessions. 

The inhabitants on the Pedee also felt this moulding 

40 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

force of the powerful transatlantic hands, in their eco- 
nomic relations and in the large latitude left for individ- 
ual effort and personal freedom; but the sense of 
brotherhood and mutual helpfulness, extending through 
all the bounds of the homogeneous colony, called clan- 
nishness by Bishop Gregg, differentiated them from 
their neighbors. Like the solid South, little Wales had 
been made solid by external pressure, and when that 
pressure was no longer exerted or feared on the Pedee, 
their cohesiveness had become a second nature, a posi- 
tive asset to be used for their common benefit. They 
stood together in self-defense before the laws were estab- 
lished and enforced, they were nearly unanimous in 
their struggles and sufferings in behalf of political lib- 
erty, and they worked together in the St. David's So- 
ciety that the young people might have educational 
advantages. The original settlers had an eye to the 
quality rather than to the number of incomers and thus, 
with better statesmanship than Uncle Sam exhibits 
in his open-door policy, one ounce of preventive, by 
shutting the door to undesirable neighbors and their 
descendants, made the intelligent and patriotic a major- 
ity large enough to use the whole social machinery in 
the interest of good government, good morals and of 
mental improvement. At Society Hill and in the sec- 
tion of which it was the centre, this type of civilization 
was dominant, and it was no little good fortune in that 
early period to become a sharer from childhood in the 
blessings of a progressive and elevating environment. 



41 



CHAPTER V 

THE ANCESTRY, EDUCATION AND MARRIAGE OF DAVID 
ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

AMONG the numerous descendants of the Welsh 
ZA and their neighbors to whom lands were as- 
-/ jL signed, no one appreciated more highly the 
advantages of his early surroundings or was more 
worthy of remembrance than David Rogerson Williams, 
the son of David Williams and the grandson of Rev. 
Robert Wilhams, the founder of the family on the Pe- 
dee. All the writers on the subject agree that Robert 
Wilhams was born in Northampton, North Carolina, 
in 1717, but they do not agree as to his nationality, the 
time of arrival on the Pedee or his early religious asso- 
ciations. In "The Wilhams Family" by Professor 
Ames he is put down as of English extraction and of 
Church of England proclivities; by others including 
Judge O'Neall he is made of Welsh extraction. The 
date of his coming to the Pedee is placed by Bishop 
Gregg about 1738, by Professor Ames about 1746. In 
this last-named year he bought two tracts of land, each 
containing one hundred acres, one of them August 
20th, from John Evans, an original member of the Welsh 
colony. It was bounded on the north by the Pedee, 
south by lands of Joseph Cunningham, and on the day 
preceding he secured from John Newberry the other 

42 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

tract, bounded by the Pedee and vacant land. In 
June, 1747, he purchased two hundred acres from Cor- 
nehus Reine, bounded by lands of Nathaniel Evans, 
Giles Bowers, and John Evans. He took up the same 
year three hundred acres of vacant land, bounded by 
the Pedee, John Evans, Samuel Wiggins, vacant land, 
Isaac Stukman and Henry Roach. Also one hundred 
and fifty acres from Samuel Wiggins, bounded by lands 
of Roach, Cunningham, John Evans and James Baber. 
Another one hundred acres were added within the first 
two years; it was bounded by the Pedee, John Evans, 
Samuel Wiggins, James Reaves and Samuel Boykin. 
The latter was a cousin of Mrs. Robert WiUiams, whose 
maiden name was Anne Boykin. Bishop Gregg, in his 
history of the Old Cheraws, appears to have missed 
the records for 1746 and to have used for 1747 docu- 
ments other than those in the archives. He spells the 
name "Boyakin." In two years Mr. Williams became 
the owner of 950 acres and his landed possessions had 
reached 2,300 acres when the present investigation 
halted. 

As early as 1746, he was mentioned by Morgan Ed- 
wards as a member of the Welsh Neck Church and as 
speaking with Rev. Mr. Brown in opposition to a cus- 
tom — laying on of hands — peculiar to the Welsh Neck 
and its mother church in Pennsylvania. He became 
pastor of the Welsh Neck in 1752 and besides his work 
as pastor he had great success in preaching to some 
churches in North Carolina (J. C. Furman). He con- 
tinued in his pastorate till 1759 when a letter of dis- 
mission was called for. Some disagreement having 
arisen between the retiring pastor and the church, the 
latter finally cancelled the letter of dismission and ex- 

43 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

eluded him and his wife, Mrs. Anne Wilhams, from its 
membership. Mr. Wilhams laid the matter before the 
Charleston Association in 1762 and "the church 
received a letter of advice relative to this affair and ad- 
vised that they should receive a letter of acknowledg- 
ment made and signed before the Association and 
thereupon he should be restored." The church chose 
to add another condition to what the acknowledgment 
contained and increased the alienation. In reference 
to their subsequent reconciliation, due probably to the 
mediation of the Association, the records are silent. 
Owing to the loss of the early minutes, from 1752 to 
1762, it cannot be decided what part he took in the 
proceedings of the Association. Too little is known of 
his useful and unpretentious hfe. In his time was "the 
silent inevitable pressure of the race into the wilder- 
ness" when men felled the forests, subdued the wilder- 
ness and forgot to hand down the names and deeds of 
themselves and their forefathers. Mr. Williams was a 
pioneer Baptist preacher who did not depend on the 
churches for a support. He was a man of some means 
and wisely cared for and augmented his possessions. 
He survived his wife, Anne Boykin, and left a good 
property for his children. He died in 1767 or 1768. 
A part of the last tribute to his worth, taken from his 
funeral sermon, has been handed down by Benedict 
and others: "He was kind to the poor and especially 
to the afflicted; a man of excellent natural parts and 
a minister who preached the gospel to the edification 
and comfort of souls, as many have testified to me, and 
to crown it all, a sincere Christian." His will was 
probated in Charleston in July, 1768. 

David Williams, one of his sons, was born in Febru- 

44 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

ary, 1739, and became an inmate of Rev. Oliver Hart's 
home in Charles Town in January, 1756, and received 
there a classical education. He married Anne Rogerson 
and apparently made Charleston his home and head- 
quarters ; but the larger part of his visible property was on 
the Pedee, where he spent his last days. He, too, in- 
vested largely in land. In 1772 he sold seventeen tracts 
known as the Brotherhood Plantation, containing 
3,025 acres, to Rev. Edmund Botsford for 35,050 
pounds; but two or three months' possession satisfied 
the minister, who deeded it back to its owner. In 1767 
he was a member of the old First Church of Charleston 
and was selected as a man qualified to be classical 
teacher of Edmund Botsford, a candidate for the min- 
istry who remembered affectionately his "dear good 
friend Williams" fifty years afterward. In 1771 he was 
trustee of the church and placed in good company by the 
Association on a committee with Revs. Pelot, Hart and 
Morgan Edwards, to revise the system of disciphne for 
the use of the churches; and was also nominated with 
his pastor to receive contributions for Rhode Island 
College. In February, 1775, he attended the Charles- 
ton Association and was made clerk of that body. In 
June he was added by the Provincial Assembly to the 
Committee of Observation for the St. David's Parish. 
But the responsible duties of his office did not long claim 
his patriotic attention. (Gregg.) Mindful of the ap- 
proaching close of his life, in December he made a dis- 
position of his property by his last will and testament. 
He appointed his "trusty friend" Thomas Williamson, 
and George Hicks of St. David's Parish, Thomas 
Screven of St. Thomas Parish, and George Savage of 
Charles Town executors. He named three tracts con- 

45 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

taining 1,300 acres to be sold for the payment of his 
debts with all the cattle and horses not needed for 
plantation use. To his wife he gave besides household 
and kitchen furniture and animals needed on the farm, 
twelve negroes in lieu of her dowry. He was also mind- 
ful of his youngest sister Ann who had been living with 
him, and quite liberal to his married sister Mrs. McCall 
and her large family. If the child not yet born be a 
boy,* he ordered all the land east of the river and 
fifteen negroes to be assigned to his daughter. To the 
boy the lands on the southwest side with the rest and 
residue of the estate should fall; but in the event the 
child should be a girl, the greater part of the estate was 
to be divided between the two children. On the first 
of January, 1776, he died, and the dwellers on the Pedee 
and his friends in Charleston regretted his untimely 
departure. He was a useful and amiable man. (Bene- 
dict.) Cheraw lost a worthy and useful citizen in the 
death of David WiUiams. Cut off prematurely in his 
thirty-sixth year, his country could illy afford to be 
deprived of his services. His untimely end was much 
lamented. (Gregg.) His estate amounted to 4,300 
acres, seventy slaves and a large number of cattle in 
1793. (Ames.) 

About two months after his death, his son, David 
Rogerson WiUiams, was born; and in quick succession 
followed the exciting political events, Bunker Hill, 
Fort Moultrie and the Declaration of Independence. 
In these larger events were lost or unobserved the 
distressing experiences of the widows and orphans, 
sixteen hundred of whom were left in Ninety-six pre- 
cinct by the war and the strife with the tories. David 

*The right of primogeniture in South Carolina was not abolished until 1791. 

46 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Rogerson was six years old when peace returned; no 
reminiscence of the times is found in his vigorous 
speeches in later years against the mother country. 
Earlier than his eleventh year, it is inferred from 
inconclusive evidence, his home was transferred to 
Charleston; but prior to that time, his pleasure in the 
chase which never abated was doubtless kindled, and a 
brief attendance at St. David's must have been a mat- 
ter of course. The first positive trace of him is found in 
1791, at Wrentham, Massachusetts, where he was 
preparing for entrance into Rhode Island College. 
This was the first Baptist College in America and its 
foundation was due to a Welshman, Morgan Edwards, 
in 1764. Its founders were active in their efforts to 
secure the good will of the denomination in Europe and 
America. The connection by vessel between Provi- 
dence and Charleston was direct and the agents of the 
college were cordially received by the pastors and 
churches in South Carolina. The father of David 
Rogerson was one of the agents of the college, in Charles 
Town and on the Pedee; and his efforts with those of 
Revs. Pelot and Hart secured some cash and turned the 
minds of younger men in that direction. Rev. Richard 
Furman, who became pastor at Charleston in 1787, had 
the pleasure of seeing young Edwards of Society Hill, 
two Screvens of Charleston, J. B. Cook, J. M. Roberts, 
David R. Williams and his own son, Wood, reaping the 
advantages of the school. John D. Witherspoon and 
James Ervin of the Pedee were also students. The col- 
lege paid back to the state good interest by furnishing 
Eli King, Thomas Park, John Waldo, Abram Blanding, 
John Holroyd and Jonathan Maxcy to be teachers in a 
time when they were greatly needed. It was owing to 

47 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

this connection with Rhode Island College that Richard 
Furman could commend President Maxcy to the trus- 
tees to be the first president of the state college. Both 
Furman and Maxcy were Federalists, and, Thomas 
Jefferson now being President at Washington, Chancel- 
lor James espoused the candidacy of Doctor McCalla 
of the low country. Colonel Wade Hampton, a leading 
trustee, made a remark which proved effective against 
the democratic candidacy: "I know no necessary con- 
nection between politics and Hterature." 

That Doctor Furman was in a measure behind 
David's exile at Wrentham, as his mother's pastor and 
as one interested in the bunch of boys that went with 
him, is clear from a letter of Charles Screven from 
Wrentham, just after the voyage hither, September, 
1791: "Cousin Tommie gives his love to you; and Da- 
vid his most respectful compliments and hopes that you 
will excuse him for not writing to you at this opportun- 
ity." David entered the college in 1792. The records 
show that he was a voracious reader, exercising taste 
and judgment in the choice of his books. That the 
books read by him can be named in their order one 
hundred and twenty years later is owing to the assist- 
ance of Prof. W^alter C. Bronson of Brown University: 
"1793, November 16, Robertson's History of Charles 
V; Nov. 23, Female Ruin, vol. 1, he kept this out only 
two days; Nov. 25, Gibbon's Roman Empire, vol. 2; 
Dec. 5, Shakespeare V. 2; Dec. 12, do, vol. 3; Dec. 21, 
do, vol. 5; 1794, Jan. 4, do, vol. 6 (for Thomas Edwards), 
vol. 7, 10 (for himself also Pope's Odyssey, vol. 1, 2; 
Robinson's America, vol. 3, Vertol's Revol. Sweden, 
Marshall's Travels, vol. 1 (evidently stocking up for the 
vacation, then a long one. W. C. B.); Feb. 8, do, vol. 2, 

48 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

DeWitt's Maxims; Feb. 18, Anderson's History of 
France, vol. 2; Mar. 2, Robertson's Scotland, vol. 1; 
Mar. 8, do, vol. 2; Mar. 15, Moore's Travels in France, 
vol. 1; Mar. 22, do, vol. 2; March 29, Robertson's 
Inequality; April 1, Moore's Travels in Italy, vol. 1; 
April, do, vol. 2; April 12, Addison's Works, vol. 1; 
April 19, do, vol. 2; April 26, do, vol. 3; May 2, do, vol. 
4; May 8, Vaillants Travels, vol. 2; Rollin's Roman 
Hist. vol. 1, 2; June 7, Revolution in Portugal, Vertol's 
Rev. of Rome, vol. 2; June 21, Queen Anne, vol. 1; 
July 3, Thompson's Works, vol. 2, 3, July 9, Young's 
Works, vol. 3, 4 ; July 16, do, vol. 5, 6 ; July 25, Congreve's 
Otway; Oct. 31, RolUn's Roman Hist. vol. 5; Nov. 8, do, 
vol. 6; Nov. 15, Rollin's Belles Lettres, vol. 1,2; Dec. 13, 
Krames' Sketches, vol. 1; Dec. 20, do, v. 4; Dec. 27, 
do, V. 3, Spectator v. 1, 2." Wise men lay up knowl- 
edge. (O.T.) 

The Spectator was the last volume drawn, for in 
January, 1795, in his junior year, "the remittances 
from his plantation in South Carolina failed him and he 
went south to investigate the cause." (Ames.) His 
return South was begun on the 11th of January, as he 
acted as mail carrier for Screven and Cook, both of 
whom mentioned David's voyage as presenting a favor- 
able opportunity for writing to their benefactor, Rich- 
ard Furman. David was in his nineteenth year when 
he reached his plantation and "was told that his prop- 
erty was in debt and valueless and should be sold." This 
he declined, saying, "I will not buy another hat until 
my inheritance is redeemed." (Ames.) He did not 
return to college in order to graduate, but the authorities 
recognized the good work done by the young man and 
conferred on him the degree of A. M. in 1801. He was 

49 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

in Providence on the 14th of August, 1796, to bring 
home his bride, Miss Sarah Power, a young lady whose 
favor he had found time to cultivate even while devour- 
ing so many volumes of the library. The new hat, of 
course, had to come, for such an occasion, before he had 
time to sell his second crop, but he saw through the 
financial cloud before he embarked on the matrimonial 
sea. He did not return at once to Society Hill. 

In October following Pastor Botsford informed his 
friend Furman that some of Mr. Williams' negroes were 
inquiring the way to Zion. Two of them had been 
examined and accepted but not baptized, "as Mr. Wil- 
hams is not returned." But he did return to his farm 
in his own time; for Mr. Botsford having removed to 
Georgetown, stated in his correspondence, in August, 
1797, that "Mr. David WiUiams is here waiting for a 
passage to New England; his lady is in a very bad way; 
though I suppose better than she has been. Soon after 
her delivery, she was in a state of perfect distraction; 
her disorder now seems rather a settled melancholy; of 
all the disorders to which human nature is incident, the 
loss of reason appears to me the most awful." The 
disorder, however, was only temporary. ^ The first 
born was a son and was well and favorably known in 
after years as John Nicholas Williams, his birth being 
at Society Hill, July 2, 1797. From this time till 1801 
some uncertainty hangs over the place or places where 
Mr. Williams and his family were abiding and what he 
was doing. Using the always reliable minutes of the 
St. David's Society, one is justified in locating him at 
his farm January, 1798, till the fall of 1799, or at least in 
Society Hill at the time of the stated and called meet- 
ings of that body and he was honored by the legislature 

50 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

by an appointment to act as a Commissioner for Darling- 
ton District to decide a line in dispute on the Chester- 
field side. (Gregg.) He was probably at Providence 
in December, 1799, at the time of the birth of his second 
and last child, George Frederick, who died in boyhood. 
On the 2d of January, 1810, Rev. Mr. Botsford jotted 
down this item: "This day I heard of the death of Col. 
David Williams' youngest son, who died the day after 
his return from bringing home my daughter Caty" to 
Georgetown. 

Sources: In Chapters IV and V, the Archives of the 
State, Gregg's History of the Old Cheraws, the Minutes 
of the St. David's Society, the Minutes of the Welsh 
Neck Church, the Historical Sketch of the Welsh Neck 
Church, 1888, the Wilhams Family, Ohver Hart's Diary, 
Minutes of the Charleston Association, the Furman 
Collection, O'Neall's Bench and Bar. Prof. Walter C. 
Bronson's contribution to this chapter is nearly all that 
is known about David's life at college, except that his 
roommate was Abram Blanding. 



51 



CHAPTER VI 

HIS CAREER AS AN EDITOR 

IN 1785 John E. Mclver, the brother of the better 
known Evander Mclver, entered into partnership 
in the firm of Childs, Mclver & Co., of Charleston. 
In 1794 his paper was called the City Gazette and Daily 
Advertiser and was issued by Markland and Mclver. 
At the end of the year they sold the paper to Frenau and 
Payne, who continued it the remainder of the century. 

The presidential election which seated Thomas Jef- 
ferson in the presidency had just closed and left behind 
some sincere doubts in the minds of the Federalists 
whether the new government could avoid a general 
collapse. The French Revolution made many fear that 
a government by a democracy would end in the same 
way. One Federalist declared that the devil knew not 
what he did when he made man political, he crossed 
himself by it. Similar periods of uneasiness have been 
passed through in this state and others are yet to come, 
but there is always hope in the ultimate result, while 
the poor and the rich belong to one stock and most of 
them are native born. Evil men and evil counsels may 
prevail for a while, but reason and open discussion will 
guide the people to the better. Frenau and Payne had 
advocated the democratic side and felt the pecuniary 
loss entailed by their opposition to the strong Federalist 

52 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

sentiment and were not unwilling to hand over their 
paper and good will to their fellow democrats, Mclver 
and Williams. Early in 1801 Mr. Williams emerged 
from the obscurity of the two previous years and be- 
came, with Mr. Mclver, the joint editor and proprietor 
of the City Gazette and the Weekly Carolina Gazette. 
This happy editorial arrangement brought together 
again the mother, daughter and son and promised 
congenial and profitable employment; but it was des- 
tined to be of short duration. The senior partner and 
brother-in-law endured a protracted illness and died in 
May, aged thirty-seven years. 

"It is a tribute," said the Gazette, "due to the mem- 
ory of this gentleman to say that to a cultivated under- 
standing he added a most benevolent disposition; that 
the uprightness of his heart and the assiduities of his 
manners were such as evinced respect of all who enjoyed 
the pleasure of his acquaintance. As a member of 
society, his life, unfortunately too soon closed, has been 
useful and valuable; as a husband and brother, his con- 
duct was most affectionate and exemplary ; no one was es- 
teemed more by his friends while living, nor will be more 
regretted and lamented when dead. He bore the in- 
firmities of a long and painful illness with firmness and 
resignation, and died in the hope of meeting the reward 
due to a well-spent life. He has left a widow with five 
small children, the eldest yet in its childhood, to experi- 
ence the loss of that protection and guardianship which 
would have been so ably awarded to them, had not the 
afflicting hand of Providence intervened. At the time 
of his death Mr. Mclver was a member in our state 
legislature from the united districts of Marlboro and 
Chesterfield." 

53 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

It is well known that the weekly paper estabhshed 
and maintained by Mr. Mclver exerted an important 
influence in the last fifteen years of his life. Single 
copies reached the backwoods settlement and were 
read and thumbed and preserved as if it were a treasure. 
The only reference to his relationship to the churches is 
the statement that he was one of seven to frame the 
constitutional rules and by-laws for the historic first 
church. During the remainder of the year Mr. Wil- 
liams continued sole editor, and then the firm of Mclver 
and Williams was dissolved; but in another sense it 
continued more than thirty years — in his kindness to his 
widowed sister, Mrs. Mary Ann Mclver, and her chil- 
dren through all his life. She died in 1834, and of her 
on that occasion her pastor wrote: "Yesterday I wit- 
nessed the interment of our aged and excellent sister 
Mclver gathered in like a shock of corn in his season 
fully ripe. She had given for nearly half a century the 
best proof of vital godliness — of her being a branch of 
the true vine. For seven years she had not known 
what it was to fear death." 

Mr. Williams, as sole editor and manager, said to his 
constituents in July that "he felt no small degree of 
satisfaction in issuing the Carolina Gazette in a style of 
superior elegance and perspicuity. This pleasing sen- 
sation is enhanced by the confidence that it will be 
reciprocated by the friends and patrons of the estab- 
lishment. This appearance, it is hoped, causes a silent 
conviction that notwithstanding the mournful and 
heavy loss he has sustained in his late partner, he is 
determined by unremitting ardor and the best assistance 
that can be procured to continue the paper the vehicle 
of general information and improvement. To that 

54 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

public, he feels no hesitancy in pledging his most in- 
dustrious exertions." 

At the beginning of 1802 the firm of Frenau and 
Williams was formed, a strong publishing combination 
and force in his day. Frenau' s editorial work was in the 
period, 1785-1816. He was an excellent writer, a mag- 
netic friend, kind hearted and popular; though there 
were not a few who thought that he made a tyrannical 
use at times of his paper. His friend Thomas "loved 
him next to Heaven." He died in poverty and in debt 
after having greatly prospered with D. R. Williams and 
other associates. He was held in esteem by Jefferson 
and reaped a rich harvest in being an organ of the gov- 
ernments, both of which were democratic. 

Editor Williams became also a member of the 
Charleston Mechanic Society, a benevolent and social 
organization, formed in 1794 and incorporated in 1798, 
with the statement through the Junior Warden, "that 
from the nature of their employment, and the smallness 
of their capital, they are more exposed than any other 
class of citizens to the inconveniences and distresses 
arising from sickness, and such other unavoidable ac- 
cidents as may deprive themselves and their families 
of the benefit of their exertions; and that they have 
unitedpnto a society for the purpose of raising a fund, by 
means of which such of them as are successful in the 
world, will be enabled, without inconvenience, to afford 
rehef to the unfortunate."* As no reason has been 
found for classing him as a mechanic (he was skilled 
in the use of tools), the alternative is left that he was 
prompted by purely benevolent motives to pay an ini- 
tiation fee of ten dollars and an annual fee of eight. It 

*Professor Yates Snowdon's "Labor Organizations in South Carolina, 1742-1861." 

55 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

was doubtless his way of showing interest in the welfare 
of his printers and their families. He was so consti- 
tuted that he enjoyed the annual banquets, with their 
good cheer and postprandial eloquence. 

On the 8th of February, after a violent illness lasting 
nine days, Mrs. Sarah Williams, wife of editor Williams 
and daughter of Nicholas Power of Providence, closed 
her brief probation of twenty-nine years. "When 
character rises to the dignity of example," said the 
Courier, "its traits of goodness should not be lost to the 
world. In her the benevolence of a mind, nurtured by 
religion and virtue, was excelled only by charity, tender 
and profuse. The accomplishments acquired by edu- 
cation were in her exceeded by the nobler endowments, 
equanimity of mind, sweetness of temper, and a strength 
of intellect rarely to be met with. The period of ex- 
istence she had been permitted to enjoy in this transi- 
tory state had been short yet it was wholly passed in 
the fulfillment of every duty. 

"As a wife, as a daughter, as a mother and as a friend, 
her conduct excelled — hers was a life without an inten- 
tional fault, and truly honorable to her friends; the 
recollections of which is highly consolatory to her be- 
reaved relatives." 

A break in the volumes of the Gazette preserved in the 
Charleston Library leaves the date of Mr. WilUams' 
final farewell to the editorial chair unknown. His 
pen was laid aside before July, when his election as 
Warden of St. David's Society before his return indi- 
cated his next move to Society Hill and Centre Hall. 
There he began at once to identify himself with the 
financial and educational interests of the community, 
and to make it henceforth the point from which he 

56 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

sallied forth to do the work of a man, in his day and 
generation. 

Sources: The Centennial Edition of the News and 
Courier, Bassett's History of the United States, the 
Carolina Gazette, the Charleston Courier, Thomas' 
Reminiscences, and Prof. Yates Snowdon's Labor Or- 
ganizations, 1743-186L 



57 



CHAPTER VII 

HIS HONORED MOTHER 

MRS. ANNE WILLIAMS, the mother of David 
R. Wilhams, became a widow in January, 
1776. Before December, 1782, she had married 
Capt. Jeremiah Brown. He came to the Bluff about 
1771, from New England apparently, and purchased 
three acres adjoining the Court House and adjacent to 
the dwelling of Roderick Mclver. He also purchased 
two small tracts on the west side of the Pedee. He was 
one of the early and liberal members of the St. David's 
Society. In August, 1779, he became a member of the 
Welsh Neck Church. One of his small tracts answers in 
size and situation to the one mentioned in the Memoirs 
of Edmund Botsford: "On a tract of land presented 
him by a Mr. Brown, on the southwest side of the Pedee 
about two miles of the church, the church built a house 
and he called it Bethel." 

From 1786 to 1789 he was absent from the Society's 
meetings, having moved to Charleston; but in 1788 
Mr. Brown was on the Pedee pushing farm work. Mrs. 
Brown was in Charleston, where her daughter Mary 
Ann became, about 1790, the wife of John Mclver, 
whose death has been recorded above. Both mother 
and daughter were members of the Old First church 
and "Pompey a servant of Mr. Williams" was probably 

58 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

a colored representative of the family. In 1789 Mr. 
Botsford, in instructing Mr. Furman how to care for 
some pamphlets being printed in Charleston, added: 
"If it is inconvenient or disagreeable for you to receive 
them, you will be so kind as to request Mrs. Mclver to 
send them to Mrs. Brown's. Our friend Mr. Brown is 

restored to health and is very, very but not in the 

preaching line, though I am informed he considers him- 
self as an ordained minister by virtue of the call received 
from the church. He has agreed to take a plantation 
and nine or ten hands, which is situated contiguous to 
him on this side of the river, at least I am informed so, 
and says: "If Mr. Hart* does not conclude to come to 
Pedee, he will take Mr. Mclver's land and some hands, 
as the land joins his place on the other side of the river, 
and all this to enable him to spare more time for the 
ministry. He embarked in his own boat laden with 
corn Saturday for Georgetown. See what it is to be 
industrious." 

The pastor at Charleston (Furman) and the pastor 
at Society Hill and later at Georgetown (Botsford) were 
correspondents more than thirty years. Mrs. Brown 
was known and respected by both of them. Mr. Bots- 
ford had recently married Mrs. Evans, a widowed sister 
of Mrs. Brown's son-in-law, John Mclver. He there- 
fore had a double interest in the Brown family as an 
excuse for writing to Mr. Furman in May, 1793: "I 
wish to hear respecting Captain Brown and lady; his 
brother has left these parts for little Pedee." Mr. 
Furman's reply assumes that Mr. Botsford had already 
heard Captain Brown's version of the matter: "The 

*Mr. Hart, pastor at Charleston 1750-1780. was in New Jersey and was considering 
a return to the state. He died not long afterward. 

59 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

affair respecting Mrs. Brown, you have no doubt heard 
from Mr. Brown himself. I had not much to do in the 
business and some of your friends here wish you had 
less. Mrs. Brown, I believe, never was averse to an 
amicable settlement; though she for some time seriously 
apprehended it was his intention to leave her, or at least 
convey the property he is possessed of, to his relatives 
exclusively; for the first she had reasons of which it is 
probable you are yet uninformed; and for the latter, 
reasons perhaps still exist. In what little I had to say, 
I was always an advocate of peace on proper (that is 
reasonable) considerations; and I must say I never 
found Mrs. Brown averse to it on these terms, and on 
proper assurances being given. Captain Brown's word 
and profession, you know, unhappily, has been rendered 
very light. Mrs. Brown professing satisfaction and 
he requesting, he was admitted to communion with us; 
but I confess it was with the utmost exertion of charity, 
on my part — should you ask why? I answer because 
when he undertook as a penitent to relate these things 
which had been the cause of the uneasiness, it appeared 
to be in the style of excuse and palliation, such as is 
proper for injured innocence. Even the nefarious busi- 
ness respecting Bainbridge* was represented in this 
light as goodness imposed upon and kind simplicity 
deceived. Conversation had with myself at the very 
time that business was being transacted (or directly 
after Bainbridge went away to Georgetown) in which 
ignorance was profest respecting his (Bainbridge's) 

* Bainbridge, a son of a Maryland Tory, came to Charleston about 1784 and having 
some gifts in speaking was sent to Society Hill to St. David's Academy where he made 
rapid progress. He became a minister and soon developed into a bad man and fled 
from the clutches of the law. His crime is not known, but in New Jersey he suddenly 
departed with f 10,000 not his own. 

60 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

design; and his own going away to Georgetown in the 
vessel which carried Bainbridge away, was represented 
to be accidental (all which is now acknowledged to be 
otherwise) is profest to be forgotten; and an entire 
different account given of what was transacted in George- 
town with Delesseline, from what Delesseline related 
immediately after the transaction. I mean as to cir- 
cumstances which make a prodigious odds in the com- 
plexion of a business. I could add more, but " 

What steps Mrs. Brown took to uncover Mr. Brown's 
intention of defrauding her cannot be gathered from 
the guarded words used in reference to the "affair" and 
the "uneasiness" he had caused. Mr. Brown had pos- 
sessed himself of a part of her property and had con- 
ducted himself so as to arouse her suspicion and to lose 
the confidence of his pastor. The evidence is almost 
conclusive that his plans were perfected on the Pedee 
under the forms of law, while Mrs. Brown was in 
Charleston. Peace, however, was patched up but the 
intended wrong was only deferred. 

Three years later, October 12, 1796, Mr. Botsford 
wrote again: "It is probable you have heard that Cap- 
tain Brown sold his negroes to Doctor Mason It 

is said that Mrs. Brown prior to the sale of the negroes 
to Doctor Mason sold them to David Wilhams. What 
gives the report some credit among us is that Captain 
Brown offered the negroes to David for 500 pounds 
and he refused them (having previously bargained for 
them from his mother?), which being interpreted with 
some misgivings means that Mr. Brown in his eagerness 
to turn Mrs. Brown's twelve negroes and their increase 
in the last twenty years into cash, sold them to Doctor 
Mason at a price which netted the latter in a quick sale 

61 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

*'300 pounds and a likely boy." Within the next year 
Mr. Brown was in Georgetown with Pastor Botsford 
and "seemed at times beside himself respecting the 
conduct of Mrs. Brown." What had Mrs. Brown done? 
He was winding up affairs in South Carolina, resigning 
from St. David's Society, calhng for his letter and do- 
nating a tract of land on the Pedee to the Fund of the 
General Committee of the Charleston Association. 
She had evidently given him his "walking papers." 
Twenty-four years after the donation of the tract the 
Association appointed a committee to resurvey the 
tract and establish its claim. A suit was pending 
several years before the trespasser was ejected. A part 
of it was sold for $428.50. A letter written to his father 
September, 1799, by Wood Furman then at Rhode 
Island College, lifts the curtain from the place whence 
the adventurer came and whither he went: 

"I am informed by Captain Brown's relations, that 
he is certainly married and lives somewhere on North 
River. It is reported here that he had been divorced. 
I mentioned that no such thing was practised in our 
state. It is said at least that he has a paper signed by 
Mrs. Brown, in which she agrees to a separation from 
him. I suppose, if this is the case, it is made use of, 
instead of a divorce, to justify his conduct in marrying 
again." The statement about the signature rests upon 
the veracity of Jeremiah Brown. The laws of the state 
once guarded very imperfectly the property of married 
women against unscrupulous husbands and their amend- 
ment must be credited to the publicity given to such 
conduct as was exhibited in this case. Divorces have 
never been granted in South Carohna, except in a few 
cases during the carpet-bag regime, when a plump sum 

62 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

of money could snap the ties that were to bind till 
death. Separation a mensa et toro, from bed and 
board, has always been honorable, since two cannot 
walk together except they be agreed. Mrs. Brown 
suffered in mind, property and rights, but she retained 
the moral support of Richard Furman her pastor in 
Charleston where she appears to have been from 1787 
to 1803. In December of that last-mentioned year, her 
letter of dismission was accepted by the Welsh Neck 
church. From that time till her death, she was at So- 
ciety Hill, presumably an honored guest in David's 
house, and mother of his boys, Nicholas and George, 
together perhaps with her daughter and her five chil- 
dren. She lived to follow her son with a mother's inter- 
est in the honors won on the farm and in the forum. 
On June 1, 1811, the Welsh Neck church showed its 
appreciation of her worth by appointing "Daniel White 
and Evander Mclver to write and have published the 
obituary of sister Ann Brown late of this church, as a 
testimony of her great piety and zeal and our high es- 
teem of her." "Dear Woman," exclaimed her former 
pastor when he heard of her death, "she has left few, if 
any, behind her animated with the same zealous con- 
cern for the glory of God. She rests from her labors 
and her works follow her." 



63 



M 



CHAPTER VIII 

IN THE NINTH CONGRESS 

R. WILLIAMS' resignation had not been sent 
to the St. David's Society, although his home 
had been transferred to Charleston. He was 
treated as an absent member who paid up dues and 
remained in good standing. There is a tradition that 
he sold his entire property to John E. Mclver, but if 
he did, the death of Mr. Mclver occurred before the 
transaction was recorded. He was made warden of the 
Society, and the minutes of that body show that he was 
at Centre Hall or Society Hill the two years succeeding 
his return, but nothing has come to light concerning his 
farming operations. In 1805 he made an excursion 
through the Northern States, and renewed his ac- 
quaintance with the good people of Providence. He 
called on President Messer with the hope of securing a 
teacher for St. David's Academy. What his private 
business might have been besides the pleasure of an 
outing, must be guessed from his well-known interest 
in the cotton crop and improvements in its manufacture; 
the first cotton seed oil was pressed about this time and 
the fifth cotton factory in New England was built. 
(Thomas.) Possibly his return home was through 
Washington where his entrance into politics may have 
received a practical impulse. 

64 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

The first representative of Darlington District in 
the House of Representatives was Lemuel Benton who 
arrived in Philadelphia on the last day of the session 
in 1794, presented his credentials, was enrolled on his 
own condition that he should receive no money for ex- 
penses or attendance. There had been sickness in his 
family and a detention by a long voyage. He gave 
way to Benjamin Huger in 1799 who served in the Sixth, 
Seventh and Eighth Congresses and was succeeded by 
David R. Williams in the same general election which 
made President Jefferson his own successor. In his 
first term, Jefferson had succeeded in giving perma- 
nency to the democratic revolution and kept politics in 
a continual simmer. 

By a fortunate concurrence of circumstances, the 
President purchased the Louisiana territory at a price 
which his opponent and critic, John Randolph, declared 
not too much to pay for the bed of the father of waters. 
The addition of so much territory on the southern side 
added fuel to the jealousy already existing between the 
two sections. When Mr. Adams retired from the presi- 
dency in favor of a Southern man, it meant that the 
paramount influence in the executive department was 
and was to be Southern; and the keen-eyed Federalists 
looked on in dismay as they saw the prospect of large 
additions to the Southern forces, and perceived no es- 
cape from a secondary position except in secession. 
Accordingly Hamilton was to be nominated for Gover- 
nor of New York with the ulterior view of carrying the 
state out of the union into a contemplated New Eng- 
land Confederacy. But Hamilton decHned and Burr 
was found with a more pliant conscience. His defeat 
for the gubernatorial office brought on the colhsions 

65 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

frequent and varied between Burr and Hamilton and 
the subsequent disturbing events. 

In the meantime the United States was becoming 
the second commercial nation. For twelve years there 
had been war in Europe and the sagacious and energetic 
commercial magnates of the New England and Middle 
States seized the opportunity of becoming the carriers 
of the world's trade. It was asked in the House, where 
did they get the money to carry on the world's trade, 
and it was answered with another question, "A traveller 
passing through South Carolina and Georgia might ask, 
'Whence this immense wealth I see?'" The first five 
years of the new century were "halcyon days" to the 
New England merchantmen and in the same years at 
the South cotton was at a high price and field hands, 
provided by non-native kidnappers, were brought in 
in great numbers to cultivate the fleecy staple. 

It was in such an interesting juncture of affairs that 
Mr. Williams heard the siren's song and came to the 
front at Washington, being enrolled in the House on 
December 2, 1805, in his thirtieth year. He had his 
views already matured and, as will be seen, ever acted in 
entire accord with them. He was at first opposed to 
any steps which would lead to war, or to any action which 
would curtail the prosperity of the country. He was not 
a prophet ; he judged the future by the past and whenever 
he erred it was because the weightier reasonings from 
past experience were not quite applicable to the young 
nation's development on new lines. The first cold dip 
administered to the warmth of his patriotism was 
administered in a part of the President's message: 
"Our coasts have been infested, our harbors watched by 
private armed vessels, some of them without commis- 

66 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

sion, some with illegal commissions, others with those 
of legal form, but committing piratical acts. They 
have captured in the very entrance of our harbors, as 
well as on the high seas, not only the vessels of our 
friends coming to trade with us, but also our own. They 
have carried them off under pretense of legal adjudica- 
tion, plundered or sunk them by the way, maltreated 
the crews, abandoned them in boats, in the open sea or 
desert shores without food." 

The work of the session and of the Ninth Congress 
was directed largely by the recommendations of this 
message, to fortify the port towns, to increase the 
number of gunboats, to organize the militia and modify 
its system. The President wanted peace in order to 
hquidate the pubhc debt and preserve the present 
prosperity. His course and that of President Madison 
appear from subsequent points of view to have been 
timid and almost pusillanimous; but they were sailing in 
dangerous waters, between Scylla and Charybdis. 
That they passed safely through dangers within and 
without to which they were exposed, and handed over 
the ship of state to their successors, is proof of some 
fitness for the delicate task of rearing to maturity an 
infant republic. 

Mr. Williams' first speech was brought out by a criti- 
cism of the legislature of South Carohna. That body 
had removed in 1803 the restrictions against the im- 
portation of slaves and made South Carolina the only 
state and Charleston the only port where slaves could 
be lawfully imported. It was proposed to lay a tax of 
ten dollars on each imported slave, but Mr. Williams 
asked that the matter be postponed about a fortnight, 
as the legislature of South Carolina then in session 

67 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

would probably repeal the action of 1803. This course 
was pursued, but in the South Carolina legislature, the 
House favored the closing of the port, but in the Senate 
it was lost by one vote. The subject therefore was 
reintroduced in the House of Representatives at Wash- 
ington and discussed with more or less restraint and 
feeling. Nathaniel Macon said it was an evil for which 
the wisest man in the nation could not satisfy himself 
with a cure and Bidwell of Massachusetts said "it will 
weaken us as a nation," a remark supported by the 
three-fifth valuation of the negro by the Constitution, a 
ratio which will probably never be increased as a freed- 
man. Mr. Williams became restive and made some 
warm remarks in reply to speeches which were not 
recorded in the Annual Register: 

"If the object of bringing forward the business was 
to give gentlemen an opportunity to vent their spleen 
against South Carolina, they had enjoyed it, when they 
had painted her conduct in the most odious and detest- 
able colors their ingenuity could invent; when they had 
cast upon the community, in a most unmanly manner, 
all the opprobrium applicable to an inhabitant of New- 
gate; and has applied to a whole community what they 
dare not apply to a single individual of it. There was 
not a state in the Union which had appropriated so 
much money for objects of munificence and improve- 
ment of literature, for the maintenance of the poor. 
Was South Carolina backward in the Revolutionary 
contest, or deficient in patriots or statesmen? There 
sits a descendant (Robert Marion) of as brave an officer 
as ever hved, and in the other branch of the legislature 
is to be seen a man (Sumter) who may be called the 
hero of liberty; a man who in the worst of times did not 

68 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

despair of the republic. Are we now to be anathema- 
tized as depraved and abandoned?" 

The debate about slavery continued at intervals 
through the Ninth Congress up to the passage of the act 
forbidding the importation of slaves. The rancor ex- 
hibited in the discussion satisfied John Randolph that 
"if the time of disunion between the states should 
arrive, the line of severance would be between the 
slaveholding and non-slaveholding states." He fore- 
saw also the danger of the Northern people's becoming 
an abolition society. Southern people, he thought, 
were no more to blame for slavery than they were for 
their own procreation. The tax failed to become a 
measure. 

The discussion of the non-intercourse act which 
aimed at excluding merchandise from England until 
satisfactory reparation for impressment of citizens and 
seizures of vessels should be made, brought a speech 
from Mr. Williams in opposition. As it appeared to 
him, the non-intercourse act would lead to war, would 
destroy a great part of the revenue, bring to an end the 
unexampled prosperity of the country and expose the 
unfortified seaport towns to fleets of the enemy. 
Charleston had one four pounder on a crazy carriage 
in a dilapidated fort as her defence. American success 
in the competition for the carrying trade was the cause of 
British encroachments. It was a trade which benefited a 
few, and their salvation could not be worked out at the 
expense of everything dear to the nation. The act was 
passed after a long discussion and the President was 
authorized to organize, arm, and equip 100,000 militia 
and have them ready for service at a moment's notice. 

After March 31st Mr. Williams went to his planta- 

69 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

tion and mingled with his people. It is probable that 
in this summer or fall he began his extensive and costly 
enterprise of erecting a dam along the Pedee. He re- 
turned to Washington the first of December on time 
according to his fixed rule; and on the second day heard 
the President's message read. The one paragraph 
which stirred him to opposition referred to the building 
of gunboats authorized in the preceding session and 
the large number needed to be built. The remarks, 
compressed by the editor, were: "We have gunboats 
enough for use in the places where they are useful. 
Some gentlemen are disposed to make fun of gunboats, 
but they originated in federal times and those first built 
were indeed curious creatures. They were a sort of 
amphibious animal, they were a perfect nondescript 
and formed a new era in naval architecture. They had 
two heads, two keels, and never a stern. We have 
made some improvements and I hope we shall make 
more." 

Mr. Williams went to Congress as a democrat, free 
as the wind; and in the second session opposed some 
of the administration policies. He was too independent 
and ill-suited by his training to become a blind follower 
of a party. He was characterized by simplicity, candor, 
courtesy and moved by no ignoble motives. Too 
energetic to be half-hearted and too transparently 
honest in his methods to be a politician, he found him- 
self not unfrequently in the minority when he was 
morally right. One of his first visits about the capital 
was to the navy yard to see the improvements being 
made; and when he inquired under what appropriation 
they were authorized, the same answer was returned 
more than once, "Under the Contingent Fund." When 

70 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

the naval appropriation came up at the close of the 
session for approval, Mr. Williams made several at- 
tempts to have the contingent fund itemized or changed 
so as to be understood for what it was being spent. His 
motions as recorded in the Annals present the appear- 
ance of filibustering, but in the light of his own conduct, 
when he had the power, it was an effort after transpar- 
ency in the financial management of the government 
which derived its power from the will of the people. 

He was warm-hearted and generous, and had a flow 
of language which seldom failed to find the exact word, 
though it sometimes had the appearance of exagger- 
ation, corresponding to the intensity of his feelings. 
At one time he spoke when it was "extremely unpleas- 
ant" to do so; at another time he had a feeling of "ran- 
corous hostility" to a certain policy. The liberty taken 
by an architect to make changes in the plan of work 
he designated as "outrageous audacity." England 
was a shark and France was a tiger. When opposing 
a partial appropriation in favor of New York, he de- 
clared, and it was no hyperbole, that it was already one 
thousand times better fortified than Charleston. He 
stigmatized the action of the Georgia legislature in the 
Yazoo frauds as "enormous villanies." 

He knew how to pay delicate compliments as well as 
to effervesce under unfair criticism. From one of his 
colleagues (Nelson) he differed on a military question, 
but he had great respect for the man who carried on 
his body two and twenty wounds received in the service 
of his country. Of Nathaniel Macon, he said, "a 
gentleman from whom I differ with more pain than 
from any other." Notwithstanding his impetuous 
energy and outflowing eloquence, he was called to order 

71 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

but once and to personal account never. When smart- 
ing under an insinuation that he was in the objective 
case, opposed to the administration and unpatriotic, 
his unstudied response was, "I abhor and detest the 
imputation" etc. His speeches showed a knowledge of 
the subject and acquaintance with history in general 
and especially with conditions in this country. He tried 
to avoid any misunderstanding or misrepresentation 
of his opponents and his gentlemanly bearing was inci- 
dentally attested by John Randolph who once inter- 
rupted him while speaking and offered as his apology 
that he was about the only man with whom he would 
take that liberty. 

The Ninth Congress closed March 3, 1807. Ehas 
Earle, Thomas Moore, William Butler, Robert Marion, 
O'Brien Smith, were, with the subject of our sketch, 
the surviving members of the delegation from South 
Carolina, Levi Casey having died during the session. 
These agricultural Solons reached home in time to 
pitch their crops and to look after their political fences, 
and to prepare for the race which was to return them 
to Congress or leave them at home to reflect upon the 
rancor of poHtics and the vileness of the poHtical 
animal. 



72 



CHAPTER IX 

IN THE TENTH CONGRESS 

THE physical and mental equipment of Mr. Wil- 
liams made him a formidable candidate. He 
had "an exalted combination of intellectual and 
physical energy — energy incarnate and a marvellous 
vocal power."* Blameless in his reputation, he had 
nothing to hide in reference to the past or fear for the 
future. He was a planter and knew just where the 
shoe pinched his own and his constituents' feet; and 
he knew how to use the homely and powerful mother 
tongue to convey his meaning to the humblest man 
among his hearers. He was too wise and experienced 
to make promises which could not be fulfilled. Yet he 
had competition, if our reckoning be correct, which 
well-nigh deprived him of his seat. A traveller hailing 
from Connecticut has left in his diary of this year an 
account of the race in Greenville District of Ehas Earle, 
a colleague of Mr. Williams, who asked the mountain- 
eers to return him to Congress. The people in that 
section were fifty years behind Society Hill socially, 
politically, and in educational and religious advantages; 
but the poUtical methods were probably similar, dif- 
fering only in degree. There were good men who 
would not allow their competitors' jugs to pull them 

*Mr. j. W. DuBose's description. 

73 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

down to the same level ; but the beverage, by whatever 
name it is called, has always played too conspicuous a 
part in electioneering times. At old Pickensville, about 
thirteen miles from Greenville, the people met on muster 
day, September 27, 1807, to hear the candidates talk 
and speak. One of the candidates was called by his 
opponents a Federalist, another was too good a doctor 
to send away from home, and the present incumbent 
was an enemy to religion because he went to church 
and stayed out to talk and electioneer. Over in the 
Darlington District Mr. Williams was damming out 
from his bottoms the Pedee freshets and the worst that 
was brought against him was, "A man who attempts the 
impossible is too big a fool to go to Congress." 

Edward Hooker, a teacher at Ninety-six, while rusti- 
cating in the mountains, wrote in his diary the follow- 
ing description of the proceedings at Pickensville: 
"The three candidates for Congress, Alston, Hunter, 
and Earle, were present electioneering with all their 
might — distributing whiskey, giving dinners, talking, 
and haranguing, their friends at the same time making 
similar exertions for them. Besides these, there was a 
number of candidates for the Assembly. It was a sin- 
gular scene of noise, blab, and confusion. I placed 
myself on a flight of stairs where I could have a good 
view of the multitude, and there stood for some time 
an astonished spectator of a scene the resemblance of 
which I had never before witnessed; a scene ludicrous 
indeed when superficially observed, but a scene highly 
alarming when viewed by one who considers at the 
same time what inroads are made upon the sacred right 
of suffrage. Handbills containing accusations of fed- 
erahsm against one, of abuse of public trust against 

74 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

another, of fraudulent speculation against a third and 
numerous reports of a slanderous and scurrilous nature 
were freely circulated. Much drinking, swearing, curs- 
ing and threatening — but I saw no fighting. The 
minds of uninformed people were much agitated — and 
many well-meaning people were made to believe the 
national welfare was at stake and would be determined 
by the issue of this backwoods election. Doctor Hunter 
conducted with the most dignity, or rather with the 
least indignity, on this disgraceful occasion — confining 
himself to a room in the tavern, and not mixing with 
the multidude in the street; Alston fought for prose- 
lytes and adherents in the street, but took them into 
the bar-room to treat them; but Earle who loved the 
people more than any of them had his grog bench in 
the middle of the street and presided over the whiskey 
jugs himself." 

Mr. Williams was elected, but Joseph Calhoun, John 
Taylor, and L. J. Alston were sent in the place of three 
members in the Ninth Congress. A special session was 
called in October on account of a crisis in international 
affairs. In June the Leopard had attacked the Chesa- 
peake, and England had issued her order interdicting 
trade by neutrals between ports in amity with her. As 
they stood upon the brink of the precipice, they were 
compared to "innocent, defenceless sheep, without 
prudence, and almost without a shepherd, who had been 
cropping the rich harvest of neutrality on the very 
field where the wild beasts have been at combat, and 
pressing unexpected fatness, between the lion and the 
tiger in the midst of their rage." The first session of 
the Tenth Congress lasted six months and the second 
nearly four. The delegation from South Carolina had 

75 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

been respectable but not very influential. Mr. Wil- 
liams was in the lead, but his independence, frank 
speech, and warm retorts curtailed somewhat his sway 
over his confreres. He found use for the knowledge 
laid up in his early reading at Providence and supple- 
mented it by a Ubrary of his own. He was diligent 
above the average in his efforts to grasp the political 
situation and serve his country. The farm down on the 
Pedee satisfied his moderate desires and left him unim- 
peded in his ambition to serve his country. For him 
there were no half-formed convictions and no favor of 
temporizing measures. His speeches were on naval ap- 
propriations, the increase of the navy, the embargo, its 
enforcement, amendment, or repeal, and on foreign 
relations. His reasoning on the subject brought him 
to a decided opposition to the navy and its increase, 
because there was no commerce to defend, and that an 
increased navy would be in the end as it was in Europe, 
an augmentation of the enemy's sea power. The grand 
scheme of the administration was to increase the num- 
ber of gunboats to some two hundred and sixty in 
number, and to appropriate one million for fortifica- 
tions of forty-five ports and harbors and nearly half a 
milhon for arms and ammunition. A quarter of a mil- 
lion annually was voted for arming the whole body of 
militia, and provisions were made for a small addition 
to the army. 

Mr. Williams' greatest speech in the Tenth Congress 
was delivered in December, 1808, on the embargo. It 
was imperfectly reported in the Annals of Congress, 
which were often a mixture of direct and indirect dis- 
course. His speeches are not of the epic character in 
which the speaker is hid from view. They partake 

76 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

rather of the lyric subjectiveness which mingles the 
thought and feelings of the speaker and warms the logic 
of his discourse; and owing to the feature of egoism, 
they become bits of autobiography. The selections 
from his speeches, here and below, are selected to serve 
as the honest index of what the pubhc servant was. 
They can give no conception of his speeches as a whole : 
"Some gentlemen have gone into a discussion of the 
propriety of encouraging manufactures in this country. 
I heard with regret the observation of the gentleman 
from Virginia on this subject. I will be excused by him 
for offering my protest against those sentiments. I am 
for no high protecting duties in favor of any description 
of men in this country. Extending to him the equal 
protection of the law, I am for keeping the manufacturer 
on the same footing with the agriculturist. Under such 
a system they will increase precisely in that proportion 
which will essentially advance the public good. So 
far as your revenue system has protected the interests 
of your merchants, I am sincerely rejoiced; but I can 
consent to no additional imposition of duty, by way of 
bounty to one description of persons, at the expense of 
another, equally meritorious. I deplore most sincerely 
the situation into which the unprecedented state of the 
world has thrown the merchant. A gentleman from 
Massachusetts has said, they feel all the sensibility for 
the mercantile interest, which we feel for a certain 
species of property in the Southern States. This appeal 
is understood, and I well remember, that some of their 
representatives were among the first who felt for our 
distressing situation, while discussing the bill to pro- 
hibit the importation of slaves. I feel all the sympathy 
for that interest now, which was felt for us then ; but I 

77 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

ask if it is not sound policy to encourage the patriotism 
of our merchants to support still longer the sacrifices, 
which the public exigencies call for, with spirit and reso- 
lution? If they should suffer most from our present 
situation, it is for their immediate advantage that we 
are contending. I must be allowed in continuation to 
say, that although I do not profess to be one of the 
exclusive protectors of commerce, I am as willing to 
defend certain rights of the merchant, as the rights of 
the planter. Thus far I will go : I will assist in directing 
the physical strength of the nation to the protection of 
that commerce which properly grows out of the produce 
of the soil; but no further. Nor am I therefore dis- 
posed to limit the field of his enterprise. Go up to 
Mocha, through the Dardanelles, into the South Seas. 
Search for gums, skins, and gold, where and when you 
please; but take care, it shall be at your own risk. If 
you get into broils and quarrels, do not call upon me, 
to leave my plough in the fields, where I am toiling for 
the bread my children must eat, or starve, to fight 
your battles. 

"It has been generally circulated throughout the 
Eastern States, in extracts of letters, said to be from 
members of Congress (and which I am certainly sorry 
for, because it has excited jealousies, which I wish to 
see allayed), that the Southern States are inimical to 
commerce. So far as South Carolina is concerned in 
the general implication, I do pronounce this a gross 
slander, an abominable falsehood, be the authors whom 
they may. The state of South Carolina is now making 
a most magnanimous sacrifice for commercial rights. 
Will gentlemen be surprised when I tell them, South 
Carolina is interested, by the suspension of our trade, 

78 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

in the article of cotton alone, to an amount greater 
than the whole revenue of the United States? We do 
make a sacrifice, sir; I wish it could be consummated. 
I should rejoice to see this day all our surplus cotton, 
rice, flour and tobacco burnt. Much better would it be 
to destroy it ourselves than to pay a tribute to any for- 
eign power. Such a national offering, caused by the 
cupidity and oppression of Great Britain, would con- 
vince her, she could not humble the spirit of freemen. 
From the nature of her products, the people of South 
Carolina can have no interest unconnected and at 
variance with commerce. They feel for the pressure of 
Boston, as much as for that on Charleston, and they 
have given proofs of that feeling. Upon a mere calcula- 
tion of dollars and cents — I do from my soul abhor 
such a calculation where national rights are concerned 
— if South Carolina could thus stoop to calculate, she 
would see that she has no interest in this question — 
upon a calculation of dollars and cents, which I repeat, 
I protest against, it is perfectly immaterial to her 
whether her cotton, rice, and tobacco go to Europe in 
English or American vessels. No, sir, she spurned a 
system which would export her produce at the expense 
of the American merchant, who ought to be her carrier. 
When a motion was made last winter for that kind of 
embargo, which the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Key) was in favor of; for he says he gave his advice to 
do that very thing, which if adopted would cut up the 
navigation interest most completely (an embargo on 
our ships and vessels only) ; South Carolina could have 
put money in her pocket (another favorite idea with the 
gentleman) by selling her produce to foreigners at 
enormous prices; her representatives here unanimously 

79 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

voted against the proposition; and her legislature, with 
a magnanimity I wish to see imitated throughout the 
United States, applauded that vote — they too said 
that they would unanimously support the embargo, at 
the expense of their lives and fortunes. She did not 
want an embargo on our ships, and not on produce. 
No, sir; she knows we are linked together by one com- 
mon chain — break it where you will, it dissolves the tie 
of union. She feels, sir, a stroke inflicted on Massachu- 
setts, with the same spirit of resistance that she would 
one on Georgia. The legislature, the representatives 
of a people with whom the love of country is indigenous, 
told you unanimously that they would support the 
measures of the general government. Thank God that 
I am the representative of such a state, and that its 
representatives would not accept of a commerce, even 
at the advice of the gentleman from Maryland, which 
would profit themselves at the expense of their eastern 
brethren. Feeling these sentiments, I cannot but say, 
in contradiction to what fell from the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Gholson) I should deplore that state of 
things which offers the merchant the lamentable alter- 
native, beggary or the plough. I would say to the 
merchant, in the sincerity of my heart, bear this pressure 
with manly fortitude, if the embargo fails of expected 
benefit, we will avenge your cause. I do say so, and 
believe the nation will maintain the assertion." 

Near the close of this address Mr. Williams alluded 
to the substance of which was said by another speaker, 
that "nations like individuals should pocket their 
honor for money," and said, "Sir, if my tongue was in 
the thunder's mouth, then with a passion would I shake 
the world and cry out, 'Treason!'" He was known in 

80 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Congress as "Thunder and Lightning WiUiams," and 
one may see how Mr. WilHams, if he raised his voice 
to suit the words, both earned his designation and gave 
some ground for the federahst compUment that he was 
somewhat theatrical. 

It happened that the prim professor, Edward 
Hooker,* who had witnessed the congressional race in 
Greenville in 1807, stopped on his journey homeward, a 
few days in Washington and heard the speech just 
quoted and thus commented on it: "Mr. D. R. Wil- 
liams of South Carolina made a long harangue of two 
hours upon it — justifying the imposition and continu- 
ance of the embargo. He recurred much to his notes, 
hesitated some, drank water freely. Began some sonor- 
ous and musical sentences which did not close equally 
well. Began some so long as to lose the connection of 
words and make bad grammar, but nevertheless had a 
pretty eloquent speech and highly figurative language, 
expressed very fair, liberal, national, harmonious sen- 
tences, expressed himself in many instances in very 
strong and emphatic language, and was by many people 
much complimented and much admired. I think though 
he was hardly logical enough and rather too ungram- 
matical and incorrect to pass for a complete scholar. 
For 'effect an insurance,' he said, 'infect an insurance,' 
and committed a few other errors." 

At a subsequent day, the observant pedagogue dined 
with a bunch of these Solons and over a dinner com- 
posed of "goose, duck, chicken pie, boiled corn beef, 
roast fresh beef, hominy made of dry corn and beans 
boiled whole, sweet and Irish potatoes, custards, roast 

*Hooker was "prone to overestimate the importance of the minutiae of pronunciation 
excessively interested in rhetoric and gesture." — J. Franklin Jameson. 

81 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

apples, crackers and butter with cheese, preserves and 
cyder," they discussed the late speeches. Representa- 
tive Blount of North Carolina put a higher estimate on 
Mr. Williams' speech and styled it *'transcendently 
elegant." 

Mr. Jefferson's second term ended in this last session 
of the Tenth Congress. C. C. Pinckney of South 
Carolina was the Federalist candidate and received 
only forty-seven votes to Madison's one hundred and 
twenty-two. It is a remarkable showing in view of Mr. 
Jefferson's pacific policy, the dissatisfaction of the com- 
mercial interests and the general depression everywhere. 
The salient feature of Jefferson's administration struck 
the average man — its economy and the large cash sur- 
plus always in the treasury after interest and several 
millions were paid on the indebtedness. In his last 
annual message he reported that more than eight mil- 
lions would be in the treasury at the end of the year. In 
this and the six and a half years previous he had ex- 
tinguished $33,580,000 of the principal of the federal 
debt, the whole of that which could be paid within the 
limits of the law. The government was just twenty 
years old. Honesty and economy in a government 
conducted with average ability are rare virtues, in this 
day when the cost of the general, state, county, and city 
governments amounts to 12,500,000,000 annually. 

Mr. Williams retired for a season also from the din 
of the forum and immersed himself in the neglected 
plantation duties, but not so thoroughly that he was 
invulnerable to Cupid's shafts. 



82 



CHAPTER X 

IN THE TWELFTH CONGRESS 

THE Tenth Congress adjourned on March 3, 
1809, and the Eleventh convened May 22d, fol- 
lowing. Mr. Williams was succeeded by Rob- 
ert Witherspoon whose sister Elizabeth he married 
in November following. (Ames.) The Eleventh Con- 
gress worked hard but it did not accomplish much in its 
three sessions. E. S. Thomas, editor of the Carolina 
Gazette, tells in his Reminiscences this defective story : 

"I made the best use of the Gazette to turn out every 
member of the Tenth Congress, with what success the 
reader will judge when told that eight out of nine were 
obliged to give place to other men. The ninth barely 
escaped and good humoredly remarked that if Thomas* 
lever, as the country people called the Gazette, could 
have had a little more purchase, he should have gone 
with the rest. It was on this occasion that Williams, 
Lowndes, Calhoun, and Cheves were first elected to 
Congress, forming with their colleagues such a constel- 
lation of talent as seldom meet from one state in that 
body." 

His judgment on the "constellation of talent" was 
true to the evidence. What other state can point to 
such a galaxy of great and patriotic men? Henry Clay 
was elected speaker of this Twelfth Congress and down 

83 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

to his old age looked back to it as the most remarkable 
of all for the talent found in it. It was the Eleventh 
Congress, and instead of eight out of nine being left 
at home, there were only eight members, three of whom 
succeeded themselves; a fourth, John Taylor, went 
back to represent South Carolina in the Senate. Rob- 
ert Witherspoon declined to be a candidate, and having 
retired from public life, gave the benefit of his influence 
to his brother-in-law, D. R. Williams. The Gazette 
may have influenced voters near Charleston, but it is 
not probable that the defeat of Alston by his opponent, 
Elias Earle, in Greenville, or the conspicuous success 
of John C. Calhoun in Abbeville District was decisively 
affected by a weekly newspaper with less than fifteen 
hundred subscribers. Mrs. St. Julian Ravenel, in her 
"Wilham Lowndes' Life," says "Calhoun and Lowndes 
were nine and twenty, born within a month of each 
other; Cheves about five years older. There was also 
David R. Williams, a man of much force and integrity, 
who had wisely endeavored to rouse the spirit of the 
inert Eleventh Congress. The desire of all these men 
to awaken the patriotism of the country and achieve 
for her a place among the nations without regard to 
political party." Mr. Williams who was in the Ninth 
and Tenth Congresses, but not in the Eleventh, as is 
assumed in the quotation, was about six years older 
than Calhoun and about one year older than Cheves. 

The Annals of the Twelfth Congress have had the 
honor of being read as a source of instruction and in- 
spiration by students of our history. Great and pa- 
triotic men in the majority and in the minority enriched 
the records with thoughts that still breathe and stir in 
the hearts of men. Mr. Calhoun was made or became 

84 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. 
Mr. Cheves was chairman of the Naval Committee and 
Mr. Williams was chairman of the Committee on Mih- 
tary Affairs. South CaroHna, in the persons of her 
representatives, was in the front of the fray, pointing 
to the necessity for war and of a preparation for it. 
Mr. Williams still thought it a waste of money to build 
a navy of a few ships to be pitted against Great Brit- 
ain's fifteen hundred. He was still for the embargo 
or for war; for as he saw the situation, it was that or 
submission. His first great speech was delivered in 
reply to Mr. Sheffey of Virginia, who opposed the rais- 
ing of an additional militia force. It was an effort 
which elicited high commendation. "No man can 
conceive," said a reporter of the Baltimore Democratic 
American, "the impressive manner in which it was de- 
livered, nor the Roman energy and overwhelming ve- 
hemence of the speaker's elocution. You have heard 
Cooper. The voice of Mr. Williams is more vigorous, 
more powerful, more commanding than that of the 
celebrated tragedian." (Quoted from Ames.) 

The Richmond Enquirer commented very happily, 
too: "The speech of Mr. Williams in reply to Mr. 
Sheffey is worthy of general perusal. It breathes the 
fire of an American, the indignation of a patriot, at the 
wrongs inflicted on his innocent country. You see at 
once that a warm and generous blood flows in his veins 
— how different from the cold and calculating politician 
to whom he replies. How highly is South Carolina gifted 
in the present Congress, Calhoun, Cheves, Lowndes, 
Williams. What a splendid constellation of talents." 

On the 25th he inaugurated another contest of wits 
by giving notice that at the first opportunity he would 

85 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

call up the bill for classifying and arming militia. Three 
days later the House resolved itself into a Committee of 
the Whole, on the bill supplementary to "an act more 
effectually to provide for the national defence by estab- 
lishing a uniform mihtia throughout the United States ; 
and also an act making provision for arming and equip- 
ping the whole body of mihtia of the United States." 
The proposed bill which came through Chairman Wil- 
liams divided the militia into three classes, the Minor, 
Junior, and Senior. The Junior, consisting of such 
persons as were over twenty-one and under thirty-one 
years of age, was to be subject to the general govern- 
ment for a term not longer than twelve months at a 
time. Each member of all classes was to receive a stand 
of arms, the right to which was to be inalienably in- 
vested in him. Four hundred thousand dollars was to be 
appropriated annually for the purchase of arms. The 
bill became at once a target to be shot at from many 
directions. But "Mr. Wilhams supported his bill with 
an ardency which did him credit for his perseverance,'* 
and with others pressed to the point where it was en- 
grossed for a third reading. 

Motions to eliminate a section, to amend it, to re- 
commit it, to postpone consideration for a stated time 
or indefinitely, were made and generally voted down; 
but the appropriation was cut in half. Some of the 
opposition were in favor of arming and classifying the 
militia but disliked one or more features of the bill. It 
was defeated by three votes, seven members favoring it 
being absent. Numerous minor objections were urged, 
but the two telhng ones were the objection to the 
phrase, "militia of the United States," since the mihtia 
belonged to the several states; and the other that the 

86 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

power to distribute and preserve the arms must be 
lodged in the legislatures of the states. These changes 
were added before it became a law, but they were not 
recommended by the Military Committee, because it 
was desired that the militia in the service of the United 
States should be freed from state regulations. Mr. 
Williams got formal leave of absence before the bill 
became law, but another bill authorizing a detachment 
of 100,000 militia was passed under his leadership, be- 
fore he returned home, where in January his barn with 
five thousand bushels of corn and thirty-five bales of 
cotton had been burnt. His leave of absence extended 
the remainder of the session, but in one month he was 
back at his post. 

On May the 13th Mr. Williams made a motion for 
which he found no precedent nor any crisis like the 
present one to require it. "Resolved, that the Speaker 
be directed to address a letter to each member of the 
House now absent, requesting his attendance prior to 
the first day in June." The purpose of the resolution 
and the speech to support it is set forth by the reporter 
of the Carolina Gazette, who considered it "of great im- 
portance": "The object of the resolution was to in- 
dicate to the merchants, by way of invitation to absent 
members, to return at a particular day, that there was 
a settled determination in Congress to make war on 
Great Britain shortly after the first of June. The fail- 
ure of the embargo to convince the mercantile part of 
the community of this settled determination, some addi- 
tional admonition was extremely necessary; and it is 
to be hoped this resolution of Mr. Williams will answer 
the purpose. There is another view of the subject. 
This notice to the absentees must be considered not 

87 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

only honorable but justified by the thinness of the House, 
and being given timely, throws the responsibility on the 
absentees. All pretexts of objection to a declaration of 
war being sectional (most of the eastern men being 
absent) are by this course destroyed. On so great a 
question as will be decided in June, it is very desirable 
there should be as full a house as possible. If it shall 
not be so, it will neither be owing to a want of exertion 
on the part of the majority nor to the absence of a unani- 
mous and clear indication of their intentions to the 
minority." 

The Twelfth Congress was now on the verge of de- 
claring war between the United States and Great Brit- 
ain ; and some of the minority complained of the undue 
haste with which the majority was leading to hostilities. 
Mr. Williams felt the force of the appeal. On a former 
occasion when some petition was being read, too late 
to accompHsh anything, a point of order was raised; 
but Mr. Williams wanted to allow the petition to be 
finished, and added, "Before God, let's stand con- 
victed if we haven't talent enough to refute it." Now 
he says to the majority: "The deportment on the 
other side of the House had, during the whole of the 
session, been very gentlemanly toward the majority; 
and, sir," said he, "will you now refuse to give them an 
opportunity to express their sentiments upon a meas- 
ure which, in their view, is important? Policy on 
the part of the majority ought to dictate the indulgence 
asked for. The majority now stands on high ground," 
etc. But his plea was heard and unheeded. "An act 
laying an embargo on all ships and vessels in the ports 
and harbors of the United States for a limited time" 
was passed as a preliminary to a declaration of war, 

88 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

which was formally declared by proclamation of the 
President on June 18, 1812. 

The first session of the Twelfth Congress adjourned 
on July 6th and Colonel Williams returned to Society 
Hill. The opposite faction at home, still known as the 
Federalists, did not look so kindly on the able repre- 
sentatives in Congress. The reporter of the Courier 
said in the midst of the exciting session, '*If the good 
people of South Carolina do not shortly request your 
Cheves, Williams, and Lowndes, notwithstanding their 
abilities, to stay at home, as soon as they constitution- 
ally can, they will deserve the evils they must suffer." 
In reference to Mr. Williams he said: "It is somewhat 
surprising that such men as Williams should so much 
dread the naval power of England, yet go to Canada 
and thus most certainly provoke the exercise of that 
power on our defenceless maritime towns, New York, 
Norfolk, or Charleston. However, I don't absolutely 
censure Mr. Williams; perhaps he is unable to discern 
the inconsistencies of his own conduct. No man is 
culpable for the honest exercise of merely such powers 
as heaven has given. And excepting the magnitude of 
his voice, I never could discover anything great about 
him." 

But the people did not agree with the critic. They 
were with their representatives. The toasts on the 
Fourth of July were such as these: "Our representatives 
in Congress : We have read and admired the magnanim- 
ity of their sentiments in forensic debate. They have 
the plaudits of their country." "The members of 
Congress from South Carolina: A Spartan band, firm 
and indissoluble. While they add weight to the na- 
tion's councils, they shed lustre on our individual state." 

89 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

In the second session, Chairman Williams' bill "con- 
cerning the pay of the army of the United States" was 
read on the 20th of November, was supported by ex- 
planations with the hope that its discussion would not 
involve the justice or necessity of the war. "War is 
now declared; we have thrown ourselves between our 
country and the enemy; and it becomes us to carry 
her triumphantly through the war or be responsible 
for the disgrace a contrary course would incur." The 
reason for raising the monthly pay of the soldier, the 
aggregate amount of which would be about one million 
dollars, having been given, he thought the remaining 
sections would speak for themselves. Mr. Stow of New 
York followed in reply and Colonel Williams in turn 
said among other things: "The enemy are on your 
western, your northern, your southern, and your east- 
ern frontier — God only knows where they are not. He 
(I) was warranted in advocating the section upon the 
great principle of national necessity and usefulness. 
In all great crises, individual benefit ought not to pre- 
ponderate against the public good. Militia services 
are transient; ought not to be solely depended on, and 
as they are released in that proportion ought your regu- 
lar forces to be increased. . . . The gentleman's 
ideas of patriotism are equally novel and mistaken; he 
contends that individuals enter military service of their 
country with precisely the same object that they be- 
come smiths — emolument. He had always considered 
that patriotism was to be found in sacrifice of individual 
advantages to the public weal, and not, as is fairly to 
be inferred from the gentleman, in drawing individual 
emolument from the public coffers. No, sir, patriotism 
is not to be purchased, it flows from the heart; it is 

90 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

based on noble principles, and although soldiers are 
paid for their services the great stimulus which carried 
them into the field is that love of country which is 
inseparable from the real patriot." 

Mr. Quincy of Massachusetts spoke of the principle 
involved in reference to enhsting minors as being 
"atrocious" and closed with what he did not mean to 
be a threat: "Pass it, and if the legislatures of the in- 
jured states do not come down upon your recruiting 
officers with the old laws against kidnapping and man- 
stealing, they are false to themselves, their posterity, 
and their country." 

Mr. Wilhams found it impossible to keep down the 
feelings of indignation which arose in his breast ; but he 
would speak with due respect to the orders of the House 
and not infringe its privileges. He wished he "had not 
occasion to speak; but, sir, it is my misfortune to be 
chairman of the Military Committee, more by your 
partiality than by any merit of mine. I am compelled 
to rise. I have been stigmatized by the gentleman as 
the introducer into this House of an atrocious principle. 
If such language comports with our rules of order, I 
must submit, seeing it is uttered where it is protected; 
but, sir, I must pronounce it a libel on myself, and 
throw it back on him who uttered it, as a foul, atrocious 
libel on the committee. Sir, I came here not disposed 
to use such language; nothing but extreme injury should 
extort it from me. I wish that the gentleman had kept 
the resolve he informed he had formed; as he could not 
do so I would that he had been good enough to spare me 
from the acrimony of his remarks. Atrocity! The 
advocate of an atrocious principle! Let the gentleman 
recur to those who originated the principle; let him go 

91 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

back to the day of the Revolution and damn the mem- 
ory of the patriots of those times, the fruit of whose 
labors he so ill deserves to enjoy. . . . The gen- 
tleman from Massachusetts admits a necessity may 
exist to justify the course proposed by the bill. Well, 
sir, was there ever a crisis caUing on our people for 
vigorous exertions, more awful than that which impends 
over us now? Now when a vile spirit of party has 
gone abroad and distracted the Union? Now that the 
state which the gentleman represents is almost in arms 
against us? And in such a state of things are we to be 
told that we are espousing an atrocious principle, be- 
cause we are seeking for the means to defend our coun- 
try? The will of the President is the law of the land, 
says the gentleman. How can he expect his arguments 
to be attended to, when the first word he utters after 
taking his seat is to insult and abuse every one opposed 
to him in opinion? I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker, I 
ask that of the House for the language I am compelled 
to use; but so long as I am a man, so help me God, when 
I am told I am actuated by an atrocious principle, I 
will throw it back in the teeth of the assertor as an atro- 
cious falsehood. . . . We ask not for the sustain- 
ment of an atrocious principle or for the adoption of an 
immoral law, but for the means to support a just war 
until we can obtain an honorable peace — as much for the 
convenience and real benefit of that gentleman and his 
friends as of any in the House. . . . Let Massa- 
chusetts, as the gentleman has threatened, resist the 
law; I thank God there is yet no point of contact be- 
tween us, but if she shall, contrary to our mutual inter- 
ests, array herself against the general government, I 
for one shall not hesitate to search for the proof that she 

92 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

is only a component part of the Union — not its ar- 
bitress." 

John Randolph characterized Mr. Quincy's speech 
as having "more of eloquence than temperance" and 
as being "answered in a style not dissimilar by 'my 
worthy friend on the left' (Mr. Wilhams). They both 
reminded him of a stroke of perhaps the only comic 
poet this country has produced: 

"The more they injured their side, 
The more argument they applied." 

Mr. Randolph called attention to the similarity of 
position occupied by Virginia and Kentucky in 1798 
and 1799, when those states would not be "dragooned 
into measures of the Adams administration," and the 
good sense and patriotism of the American people rati- 
fied what they did. 

Mr. Williams stood reproved but not corrected by his 
friend from Virginia. "With respect to dragooning 
Massachusetts, I feel no more disposition to do it than 
that gentleman ; I believe he would shrink with as much 
intrinsic abhorrence from measures openly advocated 
in that country as I would. Her leaders dare not tell 
the people that they refused to grant their physical 
force to support the country's independence to save it 
from British domination. The gentleman from Massa- 
chusetts did not say so. They writhe under the lash 
but dare not defend their conduct. There is no point 
of contact between her and the Union — God forbid 
there should be! — but if there should be, I would be 
one to teach her her duty. . . . Yes, sir, I do hope 
that the authority of the Union and of that state may 
never come in contact, that we may not be under the 

93 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

necessity of putting down the desperate measures of 
that state. Sir, when we are insulted, when we are 
'dragooned' for endeavoring to put our country in the 
armor the times call for, when an attempt is made to 
deprive us of the means of defense, I, for one, will not 
refrain from expressing my sentiments of such conduct 
and of the remedy for it." The bill passed, yeas 64, 
nays 37. 

The House again resolved itself into a Committee of 
the Whole on the bill "supplementary to the act for the 
more perfect organization of the army" and on the bill 
"in addition to the act of raising an additional force." 
As chairman of the Military Committee, Mr. Williams 
brought up the matter by motion for consideration. 
He felt embarrassed because of the importance of the 
subject and a fear that its success might in a measure 
depend upon him. He was no doubt outlining the ad- 
ministration's plan of action in this excerpt: "To effect 
the first great object, defence of the exposed parts, it 
struck him as of primary importance, that the whole 
jurisdictional limits of the United States should be 
divided into military districts, that the command of 
each should be intrusted to an intelligent officer who 
should have under his command certain portions of 
artillery and infantry of the regular army; that in each 
district there should be a sufficient number of cannon 
mounted on travelhng carriages, etc., and an engineer 
to devise the plans, and superintend the erection of such 
works of defence as may be necessary," etc. 

Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, while laboring under 
physical weakness, made the speech of the session in 
opposition to the administration and of the war. Some 
of the closing paragraphs show how latent fires of jeal- 

94 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

ousy were slumbering under the political ashes: "Tak- 
ing the years for which the Presidential chair is already 
filled, into the account, out of twenty-eight years since 
our constitution was established, the single state of 
Virginia has furnished the President for twenty-four 
years. And further, it is now as distinctly known, and 
famiharly talked about in this city and vicinity, who is 
the destined successor of the present President, after 
the expiration of his ensuing term, and known, too, that 
he is a Virginian, as it was known and famiharly talked 
about during the presidency of Mr. Jefferson, that the 
present President was to be his successor. And the 
former was, and the latter is, a subject of as much 
notoriety, and to human appearance, of as much cer- 
tainty, too, as who will be the successor to the British 
crown is a matter of notoriety in that country. To 
secure the succession and keep it in the destined line 
has been, is and will continue to be, the main object of 
the pohcy of these men. This is the point on which the 
projects of the cabinet for three years past have been 
brought to bear — that James the First (Madison) 
should be made to continue four years longer. And 
this is the point on which the projects of the cabinet 
will be brought to bear for three years to come — that 
James the Second (Monroe) shall be made to succeed, 
according to the fundamental rescripts of the Monticel- 
lian dynasty." 

Mr. Quincy was called to order, but he gradually 
worked back to the pain in his heart: "When I assert 
that the present Secretary of State (Monroe), who is 
now the acting Secretary of War, is destined by a 
cabinet of which he himself constitues one-third, for 
the command of this army, I know that I assert inten- 

95 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

tions to exist which have not yet developed themselves, 
by an official avowal. The truth is, the moment for an 
official avowal is not yet come. The cabinet must 
work along by degrees and only show their cards as 
they play them. The army must first be authorized. 
The bill for the new major-generals must be passed. 
Then upon their plan, it will be found necessary to con- 
stitute a Lieutenant-General. 'And who so proper,' 
the cabinet will exclaim, 'as one of ourselves!' And 
who so proper as one of the cabinet?" This interest- 
ing speech was closed with a crack of his whip: "If in 
common with my countrymen, my children are destined 
to be slaves, and to yoke in with negroes, chained to 
the car of a Southern master, they, at least, shall have 
this sweet consciousness as the consolation of their con- 
dition, they shall be able to say: 'Our fathers were guilt- 
less of these chains.'" 

On January 14, 1813, Mr. Cheves made the last great 
speech on "Additional Military Force," and at its close 
it passed, for the bill 77, against it 42. In the opening 
sentence Mr. Cheves states that he had entirely aban- 
doned the idea of speaking on the subject, "but the 
sudden and unexpected indisposition of this moment of 
my worthy friend and honorable colleague (Mr. Wil- 
liams) the chairman of the Committee with whom this 
bill originated, who was expected to close the debate, 
has left a vacuum in the argument which I propose 
to fill. Could he have addressed you as he was pre- 
pared and anxious, in the faithful discharge of his duty 
to do, it would have rendered the feeble attempt which 
I shall make as unnecessary as it would have been im- 
pertinent and obtrusive." 

The last bill introduced by Chairman Williams was 

96 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

to provide for the appointment of new major and 
brigadier-generals. He took occasion to say that his 
illness had precluded his reply to Mr. Quincy's pre- 
diction. He now declared that no such intention of 
appointing a Lieutenant-General had ever existed in 
the minds of the administration. After some con- 
sideration it was agreed to appoint six Major-Generals 
and six Brigadier-Generals. 

In his last term in Congress, 1812-1813, Colonel Wil- 
liams was invited to dine at a private residence in 
Washington. Some months before his negro slave, 
private barber at the Factory, Alex, had disappeared. 
"The Abolitionists had already begun to operate the 
underground railroad, of late fame. The street door 
of the host was opened to the Colonel by Alex! The 
lawful master reclaimed his chattel, without the least 
question of the validity of his ownership, and long after- 
ward Alex still shaved the guests at the Factory in the 
usually contented mind of his race." (J. W. DuBose.) 

Sources: For the last three chapters, the Annals of 
Congress, Minutes of the St. David's Society, Bassett's 
United States History, Thomas' Reminiscences, Life of 
Lowndes by Mrs. Ravenel, the Charleston Courier and 
the Gazette, The Diary of Edward Hooker, who came 
and went like a meteor, saved him from the common 
oblivion by shedding a little light on South Carolina, 
1805-1808, American Historical Association, 1896. 



97 



CHAPTER XI 

HIS MILITARY SERVICES 

IN COMMON with his fellow-citizens, Mr. Williams 
on the days fixed by law took his place in a militia 
company and in the course of time found it the 
pleasure of his comrades to promote himself to the 
captaincy of the Second Battalion of the Thirty-eighth 
Regiment. His regiment, with the Thirty-seventh of 
Marlboro and the Thirty-ninth of Chesterfield, made 
up the Ninth Brigade, commanded by Brigadier- 
General Erasmus Powe. In May, 1809, Captain Wil- 
liams spent three days, with other officers, acting as a 
court-martial trying certain offenders against the regu- 
lations. In September following he was officially noti- 
fied that his military services would be dispensed with 
for a time, in order that his congressional duties might 
not be interfered with. On the heels of this notifica- 
tion came another missive from General Powe: 

"Sir: Since your absence from the state to attend 
your congressional duties, your brother officers of the 
38th regiment of my brigade, by their unanimous vote, 
have called you to the command of the said regiment. 
Your services as Lieutenant-Colonel are therefore dis- 
pensed with until your return, after Congress shall be 
adjourned, to take command of your regiment." 

Colonel Williams on his return from the Thirteenth 

98 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Congress did not offer for reelection. His successor, 
Theodore Gourdin, was summoned to a called session 
in May, in the same month that Colonel Williams was 
made president of the St. David's Society. Had he 
retired from political life for a season, or had President 
Madison given a hint of work to be done in another 
department? Earlier than the date of the subjoined 
letter, June 26, 1813, two or three South Carolinians had 
been promoted: 

"Having accepted a commission in the regular army," 
General Williams wrote to General Powe, "I hereby 
resign to you the command which I had the honor to 
hold under you, as Lieutenant-Colonel, Commandant 
of the 38th regiment, and remain with every possible 
regard, your most obedient fellow-soldier. 

"David R. Williams." 

President Madison honored South Carolina by giving 
her one-sixth of the generals authorized by Congress. 
Thomas Pinckney, a Federalist, was made Major- 
General and assigned to the Sixth District. The state 
was largely democratic, but the wisdom of the appoint- 
ment was fully justified. The minority and the major- 
ity worked together "as two feet, two hands, two eye- 
lids, upper and lower rows of teeth," or as one man in 
the common defence, and showed what the state's 
motto meant, "Animis opibusque parati." General 
Williams was assigned to the Northern army. His 
promotion and early departure became the subject of 
toasts at the Fourth of July barbecues. At Springtown, 
one was, "The enlightened and energetic statesman, 
David R. Wilhams. He will show himself the hero and 
the general in the day of battle." Another at the 

99 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

Washington Rangers' gathering was, '* May he prove as 
much a soldier as he has a statesman." 

A few weeks subsequent to the declaration of war 
there was a meeting of the citizens in Darlington in 
which James Ervin, Major George Bruce, Cornelius 
Mandeville, Major William Williams, Moses Sanders, 
Joseph Cantey, Albert Fort, Andrew Hunter, Benjamin 
Skinner, John Norwood, Sr., William Whilden, John 
Huggins, Jeremiah Belk were appointed a committee 
to draught a preamble and resolutions approbatory of 
the declaration of war. One of the resolutions adopted 
at this meeting was, "Resolved, that we highly approve 
of the firm and patriotic conduct of the Hon. D. R. Wil- 
liams, our Representative in Congress, and that a copy 
be sent to our delegation in Congress." It was deliv- 
ered to Colonel Williams on his arrival in Darlington, 
with an appropriate speech by Lemuel Benton and 
responded to in a befitting way by their Representative. 
On the 12th of July the Courier gave out the intelligence 
that Brigadier-General Williams had left home for the 
Northern frontier, two days after it was announced in 
Washington that he had left the city for the northwest- 
ern army, and his progress toward Fort George as his 
destination was announced on the 23d by the Ontario 
Messenger. The scanty knowledge about his location 
and work as an army officer in the next three months is 
gained from the Annals of Congress: 

''War Department 
''July 30, 1813. 
"Brigadier-General Boyd. 

"Sir: I have this moment received information that 
Fort Meigs is again attacked and by a considerable 

100 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

regular force. . . . It is the President's wish that 
you should communicate fully and freely with Brigadier- 
General Williams. 

"John Armstrong." 

''Headquarters Fort George, W. C. 

''August 8, 1813. 
"Conceiving myself at hberty to act offensively on 
the arrival of the fleet, an expedition was immediately 
concerted against the enemy, and acceded to by Com- 
modore Chauncey. One thousand was to embark on 
board the fleet, under command of Brigadier-General 
Williams, to land at the head of the lake. The army at 
this place was to move in two columns against the 
enemy's front, while General WiUiams assailed his rear 
and cut off his retreat. Yesterday morning, the time 
when the troops were to have embarked, the enemy's 
fleet were discovered off this place." (Gen. John P. 
Boyd, to the Secretary of War.) 

An extract from a letter dated August 29th reads as 
follows : 

**The ittack on the 23d inst., was made by the whole 
of the enemy's force, with the intention, no doubt, 
should he fail in an attempt upon our entrenchments 
to draw us into the woods. General Wilhams, with a 
part of his brigade, advanced some distance in the plain; 
but it was considered inexpedient to allow him to pursue 
into the woods." 

"August 30, 1813. 
{Wilkinson to Armstrong) "An intelligencer left 
Kingston or its vicinity last evening to tell me that Sir 

101 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

George Prevost had commenced operations against 
Boyd and had driven in his pickets and taken sixty or 
seventy prisoners, but had been repulsed from his hne 
of encampment. " 

September 17. 

"In consequence of encouragements from Gen. Boyd 
that a general and decisive movement was about to be 
made by the army and that an additional force was 
desirable, we repaired to Fort George about five weeks 
ago, with 500 men consisting of volunteers, militia, and 
Indians. Most of us remained there twelve or fourteen 
days, but our hopes not being realized, the men con- 
tinually dispersed and went home; not, however, with- 
out expectations, again encouraged by General Boyd and 
Williams, that we should be called on again to aid in 
operations." (Peter B. Porter and others to General 
Wilkinson.) 

The Camden Journal said many years afterward that 
General Williams served with General Boyd on the 
Northern frontier. "His services there were of the 
most active and laborious character and his zeal and 
gallantry were evincive of the highest chivalry. But 
we all know the unfortunate mode in which some of our 
Northern campaigns were conducted. General Wil- 
liams became disgusted and requested to be employed 
at the South. " General WiUiams reached Washington 
on the 29th of September and, according to the National 
Intelligencer, he declared that he found on his arrival 
and saw among the regiments during his continuance 
there (with Boyd) ''nothing but one common anxious 
desire to be led against the enemy." 

The Carolina Gazette announced in the middle of 

102 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

November (1813) that General Williams had left 
Charleston to join the army against the Creek Indians, 
and the same fact was reverberated in a toast at 
Dorchester: "General WilUams from the north to the 
south swiftly he flies, in the defence of his country; as 
a good soldier he is ever vigilant for her welfare." It 
was understood at Milledgeville that he was to take 
charge of General Floyd's army; but there was ap- 
parently no place for him or men for him to command 
as the following letter indicates: 

''Military District No. 6. 
''Honorable John Armstrong, 

"Dear Sir: I take leave to address you for the 
purpose of resigning the commission which the presi- 
dent of the United States has honored me with. As 
the reasons which induce this determination are inter- 
esting only to myself and family, I abstain from offering 
them, but have requested Col. Taylor to explain them 
to you. 

"I cannot take leave of you without assuring you of 
the grateful sense entertained for your official conduct 
towards 

"Your very grateful and sincere friend 

"David R. Williams. 

"N. B. This would have been transmitted to you 
through Gen. Pinckney, but not being in command, 
have not thought it material — he is apprised of it." 

The above was copied and sent by George Andrews, 
the present (1913) Adjutant-General with these words: 
"Herewith inclosed a copy of the resignation of David 
R. Williams, Brigadier-General, U. S. A.," which res- 

103 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

ignation appears to have been tendered, December 8, 
1813, but not to have been accepted until April 6, 1914. 

Where was he and why did four months intervene 
before his resignation was accepted? General Floyd 
was in command of a small army sent out against the 
Creek Indians. He was not superseded by General 
Wilhams, for a junction with him was the object of 
General Jackson's march southward in which, during 
the month of January, 1814, he crushed the Indians in 
three great battles. On the 21st of April General 
Jackson and General Pinckney united with their forces 
and on the next day disbanded the Tennessee army. 
General Jackson himself returning home. General 
Pinckney generously acknowledged General Jackson's 
worth and recommended that the Sixth Military Dis- 
trict be divided and that Jackson be made Major- 
General of the Seventh. Generals Hampton and Harri- 
son having resigned, Jackson was made Major-General 
and assigned to the new Military District. 

General WiUiams' resignation is without a post- 
ofTice, so that where he was and how employed are 
entirely unknown. There is no evidence to be found at 
Washington that he ever commanded any forces after 
he came South. The expression "Not being in com- 
mand" found in his letter of resignation is ambiguous, 
but it must apply to himself. He probably went home 
in expectation of an immediate acceptance of his resig- 
nation, about which he wrote again in January from 
Cheraw, C. H. 

No reason need be given for his resignation, outside 
of what is hinted at in his letter. There was little 
opportunity for the exercise of military talent and he 
had too much energy to be satisfied in the tented field 

104 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

when no active service was in sight. *'I love," said 
he in 1828, "like Murat in his best days, to lead the 
charge. I am a miserable poor hand at defence." 
The last year almost added famine in some places to 
the curse of war, and no doubt his several hundred 
slaves needed his personal attention. His retirement 
was accomplished with no loss of reputation among the 
people or with General Pinckney. 

A letter of inquiry addressed to the Pension Bureau 
brought from the present Commissioner, G. M. Salz- 
gaber, this information: 

"Relative to your letter, concerning a claim for pen- 
sion or bounty land filed in this bureau based on the 
service of David R. Wilhams in the War of 1812, you 
are advised that a search of the records fails to show 
that a claim for pension or bounty land based on his 
service has been filed. " 

Sources: The Minutes of the Ninth Brigade of 
Militia under General Erasmus Powe, a manuscript in 
the possession of Mr. William Godfrey of Cheraw, of 
invaluable assistance on this subject, as also have been 
the Records of the War Department, the Pension 
Bureau, and Annals of Congress. The Camden Journal, 
Carolina Gazette, Charleston Courier, the native news- 
paper sources of information. The linen tent brought 
home by General Williams remained in good condition 
till 1861, when it was presented by Mrs. J. N. Williams 
to a mess in Company F, Eighth South Carolina 
Volunteers. (Dr. James Mcintosh.) 



105 



CHAPTER XII 

GOVERNOR OF SOUTH CAROLINA 

THE remaining portion of the year 1814 was 
spent on the farm, where in the month of 
December he had to choose between duty and 
self-interest. The event has become one of the best 
known in the history of the state. It changed his 
name from "Thunder and Lightning Wilhams" to 
"The Cincinnatus of Society Hill." The story shall 
be told with the inevitable variations by several writers, 
the first introduced being Judge John Belton O'Neall: 

"In December, 1814, the legislature seemed not to 
be satisfied to elect either of the avowed candidates for / 
governor. The Mess at Mrs. McGowan's consisted of 
a large number of upper country members, among whom 
were Colonel Starling, Major Robert Wood, and others, 
with whom I was well acquainted. I was then a little 
over twenty-one, had been admitted to the bar in May 
and been in service with Colonel Tucker and Major 
Wood at Camp Alston. I had therefore some of the 
presumption of youth, with the privilege of acquaint- 
ance with these eminent men. I had seen by the 
papers that Gen. David R. Williams of Society Hill had 
resigned his commission in the United States service 
and was at home. I took the liberty of suggesting to 
the gentlemen of Mrs. G's mess General Williams as a 

106 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

fit person to be governor. It met with unanimous 
approbation and on consulting his friend, Timothy 
Dargan of DarUngton, who said he knew the General 
did not desire the office, but he knew he had never 
refused to serve when elected, he was put in nomination 
before the Senate and House of Representatives and 
was elected by an overwhelming vote. A messenger 
was dispatched to inform him of his election. The 
messenger met him driving his own wagon near Society 
Hill and inquired if General Williams was at home; he 
was answered that he was not, that the driver was the 
man. The messenger could hardly believe the fact. 
He however delivered the written message. The Gen- 
eral read it and swore he regarded it as the greatest 
misfortune of his life. He however said to the messen- 
ger, 'Go home with me and I will send an answer in the 
morning.' He accordingly wrote that he would be in 
Columbia, on the proper day, and take the oath of 
office. The day rolled around — an immense crowd was 
in attendance. General Wilhams rode on horseback, 
dismounted, hitched his horse at a rack, which once 
stood near the wall before the state house. 

"General WilUams was introduced by a Committee 
of the Senate and House and stood in front of the 
speaker. I saw him then from the gallery for the first 
time. He was in blue broadcloth dress coat and vest. 
His face was a shm florid one. He was not more than 
four feet eight inches in height, of a full habit, inclining 
to corpulency. His portrait in the college library by 
John S. Cogdell is a good Hkeness as he stood before 
me that day. His speech was one which went home to 
every heart. As soon as he had taken his oath, his 
commission had been read in the Senate Chamber, and 

107 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

he had been proclaimed by the Sheriff of Richland from 
the eastern portico of the state house, I with Capt. 
John Henderson, Col. James Williams, and Capt. George 
Creeliss, three of the members from Newberry, started 
to walk to our lodgings. Henderson said to Williams, 
'that is none of your little d d raccoon governors.'" 

Judge O'Neall's account, found in his "Bench and 
Bar," was written years after the event, but the next 
reference to this episode was made on the spot by a 
correspondent of the Carolina Gazette: 

"Gen. D. R. Wilhams," said he, on the 10th of De- 
cember, 1814, "is our governor — the election came off 
yesterday. He received 137 votes. An Express has 
been sent to the governor-elect, with an address signed 
by upwards of 70 members requesting him to accept 
the ofTice. The general replied that he would not be 
candidate and greatly preferred a private station; but 
if called to the important station, his principles as a 
republican left him no election." 

On the third day General Williams repHed : 

Addressed: " The President of the Senate and Speaker of 
the House of Representatives of the State of South Caro- 
lina, Columbia. 

''Society Hill, \2th. Dec, 1814. 
"Gentlemen: l^he letter which you addressed to 
me, in to a resolution of the Legislature of So. Carolina 
is this moment to hand. 

''Penetrated with profound gratitude for the confi- 
dence and honour bestowed upon me, I shall proceed 
forthwith to Columbia at which place I shall await the 
farther disposition of the Legislature on Saturday next. 

108 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

•'With great personal consideration I have the honor 
to be 

"Your most obt & 
very faithful servant : 
David R. Williams." 
The President of the Senate & Speaker of the H. of Repre- 
sentatives. 

From the same correspondent of the Gazette: 

"* Columbia, S. C. 
''Dec, 18, 1814. 
**We were yesterday gratified with one of the most 
delightful scenes I have ever witnessed — the qualifica- 
tion of Gen. Williams. To a person commanding and 
eloquent, he adds a countenance full of energy and 
intelligence, and a voice melodious and powerful. The 
address delivered to the legislature was one of the finest 
specimens of eloquence. The present situation of the 
country and the horrors of invasion from the enemy, 
were painted in a manner of which I could give you no 
idea. The eyes of many were filled with tears and the 
heart of every patriot beat high. In a word, it was 
impossible to give you any adequate idea of the impres- 
sion produced by the scene I have described. I believe 
no man ever went into office with so much popularity 
as Gov. Williams and no man doubts but he will fully 
equal public expectations. There were men who had 
been led to believe that Gen. WilHams did not possess 
talent of the first order; that he was hot-headed, in- 
judicious man, not qualified for important trusts. 
Men of strong passions and ardent minds will ever be 
regarded in that light by the cold politicians of the pres- 

109 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

ent day. There is not, however, one man in this place 
of any party, who does not now admit the talents and 
virtues of Gen. Williams." 

Another account embodies the tradition in one 
branch of the family:* "His usual plantation attire was 
heavy brown jeans. At the moment the messenger 
from Columbia rode up, he found the stocky man in 
brown jeans walking beside an ox-team, bearing a heavy 
rawhide whip on his shoulder. The apparent driver of 
the team had just sent the negro driver back to the 
barn to bring some tool on his shoulder, to go along 
with the wagon, but which had been neglected. This 
is the explanation of the tradition: Rather than 
let the slow-moving team stand still the master kept 
it moving on until his negro driver could go and return. 
In reply to the legislature's messenger on the stop, 
General WiUiams merely advised him to ride back 
several miles to his home (Centre Hall) and there await 
General Williams. When the General appeared later 
in his parlor, dressed in blue broadcloth coat and brass 
buttons, buff trousers, etc., the messenger was astounded 
to see the ox-wagon driver. Like General Jackson, he 
was a courtly gentleman of society as well as a burly 
man of different environments." 

General Williams became Governor on the 17th of 
December, 1814, at one o'clock p. m., "after having 
addressed the members in a short speech, in which I 
took care to guard against promises and professions, and 
exhorting the legislature to adopt every measure calcu- 

*Given by John Witherspoon DuBose, a native of Society Hill, a political essayist, 
author of the " Life and Times]of Yancey, " and other books, as it was received from his 
Uncle John Witherspoon of Society Hill, who married General Williams' granddaughter, 
and as a lad saw the Governor almost daily and heard from his family many incidents 
of the General's interesting life. 

110 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

lated to defend this state against our revengeful and 
degenerate enemy."* On the fourth day of his term he 
received a letter from General Pinckney, showing that 
the funds of the general government at his disposal had 
been exhausted and requesting him to recommend the 
legislature to come to his relief. He did so at once and 
secured a liberal response. 

In the ''Genuine Book of Nullification," by ''Hamp- 
den," are found these comments: "Let us now turn 
from New England, at the period when this most patri- 
otic convention at Hartsford (with a mighty invading 
force, in the heart of our country and a powerful navy, 
with reinforcements, hovering on our coasts) is engaged 
in adopting measures to withdraw the resources of the 
Eastern States and to embarrass and resist the general 
government — let us turn from this glorious scene to the 
traitorous and ignoble conduct of South Carolina at this 
critical conjuncture. On the 22d of December, 1814, 
the governor of South Carolina addressed the following 
letter to the Secretary of the Treasury of the United 
States : 

** 'Executive Department^ 
" 'Columbia, Dec. 22, 1814. 
'"Sir: On the 21st inst. I received a letter from 
Major-General Pinckney, covering several others, 
the purport of which was to inform me that the 
funds of the general government at his disposal 
were exhausted and that the troops now in service 
for the defence of this state could not be subsisted 
without money, and suggested the propriety of my 
recommending to the legislature the expediency of 

•Quoted from his diary, the original copy of which is in the hands of Professor Ames. 

Ill 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

an appropriation, in relief of the finances of the 
United States at this moment. 

"'I have the pleasure to inform you that two 
hundred and sixty thousand dollars have been 
placed at the disposition of the government by the 
legislature last evening. This disposition of the 
state manifests the continued good will and faith- 
fulness which our citizens feel toward (sic) the 
administration; in return for which I cannot but 
crave their special care of its defence. I hope it is 
unnecessary to add that my individual and official 
efforts will not be wanting in aiding the government 
whenever in my power. 

'"Respectfully yours, 

'"D. R. Williams.' 

"Thus it is an historic fact," continued Hampden, 
**that in one of the darkest hours of our country's ex- 
istence, the embarrassment of the Union was communi- 
cated to our legislature and before their adjournment 
in evening, the Representatives of the People of South 
Carolina freely, and at great sacrifice, opened their 
treasury to relieve and sustain the Union. To a man of 
plain understanding it would appear that one such Act 
in the hour of need would outweigh ten thousand Pro- 
fessions of patriotism at the present moment of our 
government's utmost peace and power." 

The governor's letter does not tell the whole story of 
the patriotic devotion of the people in the War of 1812; 
for the people and the city of Charleston especially 
were suffering in a financial way. The enemy's fleet 
caused importations to cease, by blockading the ports 
and capturing the small coast vessels. As commerce 

112 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

disappeared, cotton and rice became unsalable, to the 
detriment of the farmer and the people in the city alike. 
(Mrs. Ravenel.) 

The years 1815 and 1816 are for Governor Williams 
the fullest of service, the crest of the increasing volume 
of energetic and warm-hearted service — of the state 
and the people; and fortunately his still extant diary of 
the period, supplemented by newspapers and contem- 
poraneous records, leads one as in a great white way 
through that period. On the 22d of December he was 
elected Major-General of the Fourth Division, and on 
the next day visited and repaired the arsenal at Camden. 
After spending Christmas at Centre Hall, he visited 
Charleston and its arsenal and indited a letter to the 
Secretary of War, James Monroe, in which was trans- 
mitted a copy of "an act to raise a Brigade of State 
Troops," for service during the war, and a discussion 
of some nice points liable to be raised in the cooperation 
of state and United States forces: "I am solicitous to 
have an understanding upon a point before the case 
arises, which though perfectly clear to my mind may not 
be to others. If the state of South Carolina shall be 
invaded during my administration, it cannot be doubted 
that every effort the Constitution has put in my power 
to make, will be executed. In addition to the common 
resort to the militia, limited by the discretion of the 
United States officer, such an invasion may be made as 
will call for a force on state account beyond the com- 
mand of a Major-General — with such a force I shall 
find it my duty as well as my inchnation to take the 
field. While acting in cooperation with the forces of 
the general government within the limits of the state, 
can it be doubted what ought to be the extent of my 

113 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

authority over all the cooperating forces, seeing the 
Constitution has made me the Commander-in-chief? 
The period for settling questions of moment is surely 
before either the pride of command or the prejudices 
of officers are enlisted against reason. In the hour of 
battle or even in immediate preparation for it, there 
can be no time to discuss calmly who shall have the 
right to be foremost in the charge, and therefore it is 
this understanding (which) is sought. I will not add 
that it is made in the spirit of the most friendly and 
cordial solicitude for the common cause. If I may not 
safely leave such an inference to the President's and 
your bosoms after a long service in a coordinate branch 
of the government, all professions of mine would be 
disregarded and superfluous. On this subject I have 
not communicated with General Pinckney, because it 
may never be necessary for him to know that I have 
ever thought of it; we have difficulties enough to en- 
counter that spring out of the pressure of the times; 
inevitably such as can be avoided will never be solicited 
by me. . . . 

"We are now in an awful suspense, have lost the run 
of the enemy and know not where he is concentrating. 
If my actions could be quickened into more activity in 
endeavoring to repel him should he appear here, by 
any other consideration than my country's honor and 
safety, it would be that your successes would have a 
tendency to kindle toward you the gratitude of the 
state. Accept my kindest regards. " 

On the 14th, continues the diary, "almost the whole 
day was spent in viewing the lines and works erected 
for the defence of Charleston (weak on the left flank). 
General Pinckney very politely attended me with his 

114 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

suit." A description of the defences as furnished in 
Thomas' Reminiscences is not only interesting in itself 
but also needed to make fuller Hampden's account of 
the patriotism of the little state: "It was determined 
to fortify the city on the land side by a line of works 
across the neck, from Ashley to Cooper Rivers, thus 
completely cutting off the city from the country. The 
engineer was immediately set to work to lay out the 
plan, which was soon done, and the citizens determined 
to carry it into execution with all possible expedition. 
The work to the best of my recollection consisted of a 
wall of earth ten feet high and fifteen feet thick, with a 
ditch in front, ten feet deep and twenty wide, so that 
it was twenty feet from the bottom of the ditch to the 
top of the battlement. In the construction of the wall 
every shovel full of earth was pounded down, until it 
was as solid as it was possible to make it. It was then 
handsomely sodded. There were zigzags, equidistant, 
along the whole line, in which the heaviest guns were 
mounted to rake the ditch. The guns were all mounted 
in barbet at first, but it was soon discovered that that 
plan would expose the men too much. Embrasures 
were then cut which greatly disfigured the work, but 
would have been a great safeguard to the men, had 
there been an attack. The men of small arms were 
completely sheltered, except at the moment of firing, 
and then only their heads would have been exposed. 
There were 78 pieces of cannon on the wall, and the 
lines were manned by seven thousand men, to which 
three thousand men could have been added in an hour. 
This great piece of work was the production of the 
citizens and their slaves. A large sum was subscribed 
to pay laborers. All took their turn at the work — even 

115 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

the ladies, to the number of several hundreds, marched 
out and carried sods all one day. It was a glorious 
sight to see the patriotic enthusiasm which prevailed. 
The British officers that came to Charleston imme- 
diately after the peace pronounced it the handsomest 
and best put together piece of field work they ever saw. " 

On the 15th, while in Charleston, Governor WilHams 
issued a reward for the apprehension of a person who 
shot at Editor Thomas, sitting after dark in the house 
of a friend, a circumstance which grew out of a suit 
against the editor. The suit went against Thomas for 
accusing pubhcly a candidate of bribery, and after the 
sentence was pronounced "a messenger was sent to the 
governor, who was a hundred miles and more up the 
country, engaged in reviewing the militia. The mes- 
senger found him at a review and handed him his dis- 
patches, which having read, he took out a pencil and 
wrote, making use of the pommel of his saddle for a 
desk, a full and free pardon for myself (Thomas) and 
Doctor Mackey." 

On the 30th of January the Governor returned to 
Charleston, after having explored the inland navigation 
as far as the northern extremity of St. Helena. Selected 
four points for fortifications i. e. : White Point, Fen- 
wick's Island, Field's Point, and the extremity of St. 
Helena; and reviewed the mihtia of the city, including 
alarm men. Many men of age and respectability were 
found in the ranks, officers looked well, but fewer arms 
and men than he expected. His next serious business 
was the classification of the militia, but the raising of 
the new brigade and other contemplated preparations 
for defence were suddenly brought to a standstill. On 
the 19th, while at Centre Hall, he received the intelli- 

116 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

gence of the arrival at Washington of the Treaty of 
Peace. He was soon in Charleston where he had peace 
proclaimed by the sheriff through the city. "The rati- 
fication of the Treaty of Peace, " he said in his instruc- 
tions to the forces under him as commander-in-chief, 
"between the United States and his Britannic Majesty 
suspends the necessity of holding the militia of the 
state in the classes as ordered by the General Orders of 
the 4th inst., they are therefore dismissed and the re- 
turns dispensed with. Duplicate Brigade returns of 
the efTective militia, their arms and accoutrements; 
and in conformity with the order, will be prepared and 
delivered to the encampment, one copy to the Adjutant- 
General and the other to the Major-General." Orders 
naming seventeen regiments and the places and dates of 
review and exercise were issued, at most of which the 
governor himself was present. At one of the brigade 
encampments a pair of speeches were reported to the 
press: 

"The officers of the Seventh Brigade encampment at 
Strawberry unanimously request leave to present to 
your excellency their thanks for the interest which you 
have taken in their instruction, and the correct and 
polite manner in which you have personally communi- 
cated to them much valuable information. In their 
opinion the character of the Chief Magistrate has re- 
ceived additional lustre from your military talent." 

To which his excellency replied: "Such an expression 
of opinion was as unexpected as it was agreeable. He 
was sensible the officers had estimated his motives 
rather than his acts; they had bestowed a reward more 
than ample for much greater services. Such conduct 
on the part of his Brother officers could not fail to 

117 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

quicken any man to whom it might be directed — in 
the discharge of his duties, and should not fail to hold 
him steadfast to them. He requested the Committee 
would accept for themselves and present to the officers 
for whom they acted, his sincere thanks." 

Letters were transmitted to Generals Brown, Mc- 
Combs, Scott, Gaines, Porter, Ripley, Commodore 
McDonough, Captains Warrington and Blakeley and 
General Jackson, expressive of the approbation of the 
legislature of South Carolina, with one from himself as 
follows: "In communicating the sentiments of the 
legislature of South Carolina as contained in the pre- 
ceding resolutions, I beg leave to add my own personal 
admiration of your distinguished valor and good con- 
duct." 

In November Governor Williams sent his first message 
to the Senate and House, parts of which are given below: 
" To the Senate and House of Representatives. 

"Fellow Citizens: The circumstances which affect 
our beloved country and those portions of society of 
men with which our commercial interest must connect 
us are so greatly changed since your last session that 
our nation, then selected by a powerful and enraged 
enemy as the object of vengeance and punishment, now 
finds itself, after a great and successful struggle, enjoy- 
ing the only desirable situation of all that community 
of states. 

"The influences of an honorable peace pervade our 
whole country. The exigencies or ravages of a cruel 
and frightful war oppress those who were then either 
careless of our fate or solicitous of our ruin. The 
ministers of England finding its immense and victorious 
armies disposable by the peace of Paris and estimating 

118 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

our strength as they would that of a power of the old 
world, by the number of our army, ordered confident 
of success, the conflagration of our cities, the spoil of 
our land, and without doubt expected as sanguinely as 
they wished the overthrow of our government; yet the 
republic stands erect under the laurels of a glorious war, 
and encircled with a character, now become valuable 
to us, diffuses happiness within and presents to our 
immense borders, for the purposes of defence, all the 
stability and firmness of the mountain adamant. The 
distinguished valor and good conduct of the army, the 
wonderful successful resistance of the militia on land, 
the brilliant and continued victories on the ocean, above 
all the termination of hostilities, at the precise moment, 
most honorable and advantageous, establishing and 
building upon our happy and free institutions, pros- 
trating equally to the hopes of the open enemy and the 
secret traitor, all mark us as a favored people of God, 
• and command our most devout gratitude. 

"This development of our resources under circum- 
stances which threatened their destruction has given 
much importance to our national character abroad, as 
justifies the hope of security against the repetition of 
similar wrongs and injuries, as those which induced the 
war, and in that light given inestimable importance to 
the occurrence. The brave men who have bled, the 
widows and orphans of those who have died in such a 
conflict, ought not to be disappointed of their country's 
bounty — such as belong to the State of South Carohna, 
I present not to your justice but to your generos- 
ity. . . . 

"A consultation was held with Major-General 
Thomas Pinckney, commanding the Sixth Mihtary 

119 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

District, in relation to the most advantageous points 
to be fortified, for the defence of our maritime frontier; 
these were reconnoitred by the Executive in person, 
and in such as were found to embrace the advantages 
to be expected (substituting others for those which did 
not), works were either begun or preparations made 
for them which would have as far as practicable se- 
cured the objects of the legislature within a very 
limited period and at a cost much under the appropria- 
tions made; this last circumstance, however, is to be 
wholly attributed to the meritorious and patriotic 
disposition which influence the citizens within the 
neighborhood of these works. A gratuitous contribu- 
tion of labor, more than sufTicient for their completion, 
was made by them. Disbursement of the funds appro- 
priated were therefore necessary, only for engineers 
and munitions. 

"It affords the highest gratification to recollect what 
were the dispositions not only of those neighborhoods, 
but of all the citizens of this state, with which the Ex- 
ecutive had occasion to be engaged during that period 
which threatened so eminently to try the souls of men. 
The measures which were secretly prepared, or in train 
for the defence of the state, depended much for execu- 
tion on the dispositions of the citizens ; for although the 
physical force necessary was at his control, the means 
of subsistance without arbitrary executions, were not. 
It is now beheved no evil would have resulted from such 
a circumstance before the legislature could have been 
convened, for such were the zeal and determination 
every where to defend the state — the zealous and patri- 
otic — the sober-minded and virtuous — all the citizens 
with which he communicated on the subject, offered to 

120 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

throw open their barns and store houses for the main- 
tenance of the forces and pledge themselves to support 
the energetic measures that should be adopted. The 
exertions made by the citizens of Charleston and its 
vicinity for the defence of that place, were of the first 
order. The proof of this is to be seen in the substantial 
works completed at and near it. The preservation of 
such monuments of faithfulness to the government and 
love to the country, is greatly to be desired if only for 
example, and now cannot fail to engage your attention, 
etc. 

"Of the appropriations voted for arms and munitions 
a small part only has been expended. The contracts 
which were made prior to the close of the war, for ar- 
ticles chargeable to that fund, were not interfered with ; 
much the greatest amount of these is not perishable; 
those about which we were only in treaty, were immedi- 
ately given up. Although a much larger number of 
muskets and bayonets ought to be in the hands of the 
militia than are, the circumstances which induced such 
liberal grants of money for those objects ceasing to oper- 
ate, it was considered proper that those funds should not 
be expended under the altered state of things, but remain 
in the treasury, subject to such an application as the 
legislature might make — whether these funds ought 
now to be appropriated for the same objects or applied 
with others in relief of the citizens for the temporary 
heavy contribution induced by the war, is with you to 
determine. 

"Those arms, which on careful inspection, have been 
found not worth repairing, have been laid aside; all the 
others are in good order and fit for immediate use. If 
an additional number of arms is required, almost any 

121 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

number can be procured. Beyond that number neces- 
sary to state purposes, it is considered just and consti- 
tutional that the miUtary should be supplied by the 
general government. An expression of the wishes of 
the legislature in relation to this subject, cannot fail 
to receive from the government an attentive consider- 
ation, and may induce it to enlarge the appropriation 
now made *for arming the whole body of the militia,' 
to an amount bearing some proportion to the magnitude 
of the object. An expression of the pleasure of the leg- 
islature is necessary concerning such arms and munitions 
as have been put into the hands of the militia. If they 
are not to be called in, legal penalties should be provided 
to prevent their removal without the limits of the state, 
as also for their care and preservation." 

The legislature having promptly acted on these hints 
thrown out. Governor Williams sent the proceedings 
of the legislature to the President, and among his own 
words were these: "The Constitution of the United 
States vests the power to provide arms for the militia 
in the general government and its means are ample. 
Under proper organization and with arms the militia 
must continue as it has proved the nation's safe reli- 
ance. The state sovereignties depend on it and the 
administration of the general government also. It is, 
therefore, with peculiar force and justice I am directed 
to call on you for that which a wise forecast and the 
provisions of the Constitution demand not more, I 
persuade myself, than your own judgment. The legis- 
lature believe they are entitled to reap a proportion of 
the arms that have been procured by the appropriation 
for ' arming the whole body of the militia' as the relative 
population of the state will authorize." 

122 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

"A variety of expenses," continues the first message, 
*'have been incurred and paid by the state, during the 
late war, which, if right, ought to be discharged by the 
United States. Property also to a considerable amount 
has been injured or destroyed in the service of the 
United States. Such arms and equipments as our law 
requires the militia should be furnished with, and which 
had been issued to them, while in the service of the 
United States, were ordered to be received into our 
arsenals, although injured and a critical account of the 
damages taken, such as were not required by law, but 
loaned to the officer of the United States commanding 
within the state, were ordered not to be received, hav- 
ing been injured on the presumption that the United 
States would return an equivalent in kind. The will of 
the legislature when expressed on these subjects shall 
be attended to." 

In October it transpired that the general government 
had sent seven hundred and sixty-three stands of 
arms to South Carohna's quota and that a hitch had 
occurred between the parties appointed by the state 
and the Secretary of War. The halt in the settle- 
ment brought forth a letter from the Governor on the 
subject to his friend, Wilham H. Crawford, Secretary 
of War: 

"Colonel Hayne has exhibited our vouchers for arms 
loaned to the general government, being receipts from 
officers in the service and pay of that government, to 
which Captain M. objects, stating that he must produce 
the receipt not of the officer but of the United States 
arsenal keeper to prove the deposit thereof, a certain 
number of arms, and that for these only can he account. 
If this be the rule and we are to procure or lose our am- 

123 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

munitions according to it only, Captain M. will not 
have much trouble in this quarter, as I fear, notwith- 
standing all our loans, we may not have a voucher to 
fit the rules, however well the rule may fit the conven- 
ience of the United States. 

"The liberal and confiding spirit of our legislature 
during the late war formed the rule by which my pre- 
decessor in office during that period and myself have 
been governed. I beUeve not one of us imagined our 
duties were accomplished while there remained any- 
thing undone in our power to do, either for the general 
government or for its military officers. Hence it hap- 
pened that loans of munitions of war being asked for 
by Major General Pinckney of our Executives and were 
granted arms, tents, camp equipments and everything 
in our arsenals were furnished on the receipt (I fear 
sometimes without receipts) of officers receiving them 
— hence also a standing order to our arsenal keepers to 
furnish on the requisition of an officer of the United 
States service anything needed for that service. This 
was the principle upon which I understood my prede- 
cessor acted and I willingly followed so loyal an example, 
confident that the legislature would prefer the property 
should be lost rather than be wanted in the general 
defence. The wants of General Pinckney were, to our 
utmost, supplied, the articles receipted for by the offi- 
cers under his orders, yet Captain M.'s instructions oblige 
him to consider the receipts as also invalid, because 
signed by a military officer. It is a fact there was not 
a musket, bayonet, cartouch box or tent fit for service 
in our arsenal at Charleston when I came into ofiice, and 
the state had not a soldier in the field — all of the last 
mentioned articles were in the service of the United 

124 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

States, I think fully nine months. You can very well 
estimate their value when returned. 

"When St. Mary's fell and fears were entertained for 
Savannah, General Pinckney called on me for additional 
troops to cover that city and adjacent country. These 
were armed from a deposit of our arms at Coosawhat- 
chie — they were discharged at the Sisters Ferry on 
the Savannah — your personal knowledge evidences for 
us that the rule now contended for could not be com- 
plied with had we known of its existence; at that period 
there was no time to dispute about straws; the arms 
were issued — shall not the receipt for them be now 
considered valid because they were not signed by ar- 
senal keepers? Touching these arms they were issued 
by my orders and I thought proper to inquire of General 
Pinckney after he had dismissed the troops who bore 
them. I take leave to add an extract from his letter 
concerning them and munitions generally: 

"'The arms delivered us by Colonel Austin were 
ordered on account of the facility of transportation to 
be conveyed to Quarter Master's Department at Sa- 
vannah. I presume that the arms delivered to the 5th 
Brigade were among them, in which case they shall be 
returned at your election, either to Coosawhatchie or 
this place. General Pinckney soon [resigned and we] 
have not yet received a musket.' . . . The rule 
which Captain M. now objects had no existence. The 
troops were not under our orders; we could make no 
regulations for the preservation of our property. . . . 
No, sir; we believed we loaned to the United States on 
much better security than any such regulation could 
afford. We trusted to the purity of their character 
and that of their chief officers, at a time when patriot- 

125 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

ism mourned for their embarrassment — we have not 
yet learned to doubt either." 

In a second message to the legislature bearing the 
same date, the Governor, after touching on the attitude 
of Europe, brought up again a subject nearest his heart, 
a good organization of the militia, and exposed the evils 
of the system: "About the time the enemy occupied 
St. Mary's, for example, the Quartermaster General 
under my directions ordered a regimental Quarter- 
master General to remove a quantity of 12 pound balls 
from the arsenal, to a certain wharf to be sent to Beau- 
fort. Obedience was by letter deliberately refused; the 
officer was arrested on a charge of disobedience, tried 
and acquitted. No exception could be taken either to 
the character or intelligence of the officers composing 
the court. To enable you to see more readily how 
defective our system is, this case has been alluded to. 
. . . If there be one right guaranteed by our insti- 
tution upon which more of our freedom and happiness 
depend than another, the right to bear arms surely is 
that one. The state sovereignties hold their militia 
as a kind of constitutional army, to defend themselves 
from the encroachments of the general government and 
not only themselves but the union also against invasion. 
Here then is the vital importance of the militia devel- 
oped. It should therefore be armed and equipped, 
ready to take the field. Hence our institutions become 
secured in proportion to the correctness and faithful 
administration of our military organization; for while 
it embraces, it guards also the interests of life and all 
the endearments of hberty. If this greatest object 
shall be neglected during this pecuhar season for re- 
flection and improvement, our posterity, if not our- 

126 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

selves, tracing our dreadful catastrophe to that very- 
negligence, may mourn over the disgrace and ruin of 
our fallen armies, when there will be no other consola- 
tion to patriotism than the remembrance of what its 
glory and prosperity have been. 

*'A wise and faithful legislator, therefore, cannot 
consider all his duties performed, while the militia is 
deficient, either in its discipline or organization, for 
want of the necessary legal provisions. To perfect it 
is a great work, worthy of the noblest ambition — to 
improve it should be the dream of all — it is not without 
diffidence, this attempt at the latter is made — should 
other and better means be adopted no one will rejoice 
more than David R. Wilhams." 

How times have changed! From the founding of the 
colony to the civil war, military service was universal. 
State rights and the rights of the general government 
magnified the importance of the militia and kept alive 
the sparks of patriotism in the breasts of men. Even 
John Adams thought our liberty would be gone when 
the militia ceased to be. After the mighty struggle 
which prostrated the state rights advocates, the mili- 
tary system fell to pieces, and the country underwent 
changes somewhat parallel to what Rome went through 
in passing into an empire. The citizens were left to 
their daily pursuits and the government depended on 
mercenary native or foreign volunteers. As govern- 
ments become centrahzed and the people separated 
from the affairs of government, peace brings prosperity, 
prosperity brings luxury and luxury enervates the 
nation. At this moment of our history the peace ad- 
vocate is raising his impotent voice and feminine virtues 
are prevailing more and more over the masculine ele- 

127 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

ment. Men of wealth become less religious and more 
benevolent, and the sanguine believe that far-off day 
is drawing nigh when the lion and the lamb shall lie 
down together with the lamb on the outside! (This 
was penned a few weeks before the invasion of Belgium.) 



128 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE CLOSE OF HIS GOVERNORSHIP 

IN HIS term as chief magistrate, Governor Williams 
pushed to its completion the settlement of a line in 
dispute between North and South Carolina, and 
the purchase of some land within the state still belong- 
ing to the Cherokees. His friend, W. H. Crawford, in 
the cabinet at Washington, helped to consummate the 
latter transaction. Governor Williams' messages have 
been and are to be drawn upon as mines of information 
which show how much of our past is forgotten or never 
sees the light in our histories. 

In December, 1816, the Governor's message contained 
a resume of the main events within that period and 
recommendations on several subjects, especially the 
militia of the state: "The rapid progress of agriculture, 
accelerated by the uncommon rewards of labor is by 
constant though by almost imperceptible degrees im- 
pairing the efliciency of our arms, by lessening the ob- 
jects for their use, as the forests yield to the axe, the 
game which they contained disappear, and with them 
much of the excitement to a dexterous use of arms. 
Whether these have so far diminished as to require other 
incentives for the preservation of our skill in gunnery, 
you best can determine; but surely an honorable re- 
ward to such individuals as may from time to time 

129 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

distinguish themselves in the regiments, by the pre- 
cision of their fire, would be productive of good, as it 
might assist to prolong the accuracy and, of course, the 
efficiency of our fire. The man who knows and feels 
that he is superior to the enemy is very apt to meet him 
as the militia met the British at New Orleans. This 
knowledge always performs wonders. Our measures 
should be at least as much addressed to the moral as the 
physical energies of the people. With all armies equal 
reliance may be placed on the former as well as the 
latter, and with the infantry infinitely greater. 

"Two events have occurred during the present year 
which required resort to military force. A few run- 
away negroes, concealing themselves in the swamps and 
the marshes contiguous to Combahee and Ashepoo 
rivers, not having been interrupted in their petty plun- 
derings for a long time, formed the nucleus, round which 
all the ill-disposed and audacious near them gathered, 
until at length their robberies became too serious to be 
suffered with impunity. Attempts were then made to 
disperse them, which either from insufficiency of num- 
bers or bad arrangement, served by their failure only 
to encourage a wanton destruction of property. Their 
forces now became alarming, not less from its numbers 
than from its arms and ammunition with which it was 
supplied. The pecuhar situation of the whole of that 
portion of our coast, rendered access to them difficult, 
while the numerous creeks and water courses through 
the marshes around the island, furnished them easy 
opportunities to plunder, not only the planters in open 
day, but the inland coasting trade also without leaving 
a trace of their movements by which they could be 
pursued. 

130 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

"There was but one more stage to a state of things 
altogether intolerable: to prevent v/hich I felt it my 
duty to use the public force and the public money. I 
therefore ordered Major-General Youngblood to take 
the necessary measures for suppressing them, and 
authorized him to incur the necessary expenses of such 
an expedition. This was immediately executed. By a 
judicious employment of the militia under his command, 
he either captured or destroyed the whole body. 

"The other event happened in the neighborhood of 
Camden. It appears that a scheme for organizing in- 
surrection among the slaves had been for years con- 
templated by a few desperate characters. They had 
nearly matured their plans when a communication of 
them was made, in the latter part of June last to a 
faithful servant belonging to a gentleman in that neigh- 
borhood. By him I was immediately advised of the 
plot, whereupon I directed one of my aides, Lieut. Col. 
James Chesnut, to adopt such a course that would lead 
to a satisfactory knowledge of their whole project but 
to its effectual prevention. His measures corresponded 
with my confidence. They were as successful as they 
were judicious. Through the instrumentahty of the 
good servant alluded to, he carried on a counter plot by 
which he was enabled to procure ample testimony to 
convict the principals without resorting to the evidence 
of the servant who made the first disclosure, and seize 
all who were implicated, before the slightest suspicion 
of their guilt was entertained by any one, except those 
engaged with him to prevent it. They were imme- 
diately dehvered up to the civil authority and have all 
been punished except one whom the court pardoned. 

"The time has passed when all our feehngs were excited 

131 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

in relation to militia draughts by the general govern- 
ment. We then saw the efficiency of our institutions 
paralyzed, the pubHc order threatened, 'the veil of the 
temple' of the constitution 'rent in twain.' Yet the 
redeeming spirit of the people without disorder or com- 
motion, patiently struggled through the difficulties. 
The period has now come, when we can deliberately 
and without passion and prejudice review the progress 
of events, whether it be necessary by timely provision 
to guard against similar occurrences in the future. It 
can scarcely be denied that a power ought to be lodged 
somewhere competent to call out the physical force of 
the nation in national emergencies. However inex- 
pedient and dangerous it would be to strip the state 
government of all authority over the militia and vest it 
exclusively in the general government, it can be neither 
to give to this list complete power over it, for the spe- 
cial purposes enumerated in the constitution. Such a 
power appears to be a necessary attribute of sovereignty 
and essential to its preservation. . . . Whatever 
may be the political character of Congress it ought to 
have full and entire power 'to provide for the calling 
forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, sup- 
press insurrection, and repel invasion.'" 

These last words mean more than a casual reading 
would glean from them. In January, 1812, the regular 
army was increased to 35,000 men by an Act of Con- 
gress; in February the President was authorized to call 
out 50,000 volunteers to be officered by the state gov- 
ernments. A third act authorized the President to 
call for 100,000 militia. The governments of Connecti- 
cut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts refused to heed 
the call, and were sustained by the state courts. The 

132 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Supreme Court of Massachusetts decided that not the 
President but the governors of the states had the right 
to decide whether there was any necessity to call out the 
militia to execute the laws, or to suppress insurrection 
or to repel invasion. 

Governor Williams learned in Congress how difTicult 
it was to perfect a militia system. One of his best 
measures, the provision which made the militia subject 
to the orders of the President, was lost on the last ballot 
by the absence of seven men who favored it and thus by 
the opposition of many and the indifference of a few, 
the general government could not act energetically. 
The President called for 470,000 militia during the war, 
but not more than 30,000 are said to have been in the 
service at one time. General Wilhams, however, had 
no reason to rate below par the militia in his own state 
and in General Pinckney's military district. Its im- 
provement seemed to him to be of the first importance. 
To his way of viewing the compact between the states, 
the course of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massa- 
chusetts, and in the next year, Vermont, was unpatriotic 
and a rending "the veil" of the Constitution. He saw 
in the mihtia the support of the state sovereignties and 
also the defence of the general government against 
foreign enemies. He went into the war beheving that 
the President ought to have the power to call out the 
militia, and he came out of it strengthened in the same 
opinion; but it was left to another son of Carohna to 
accomplish at Washington what could not be done by 
one state. Mr. Calhoun became Secretary of War in 
1817, and to his fertile mind was due a change in the 
army regulations which is still in force, viz. : the keeping 
of a small standing army well-drilled and officered to be 

133 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

augmented by volunteers in time of war. Before his 
time, Congress had refused to vote a standing army, so 
jealous was that body of the liberty of the people, but 
after the experiences of 1812, the same body has always 
supported a standing army. It was used by the Con- 
gresses, 1868-76, to subvert the liberty of the Southern 
people, but when their representatives got back into 
Congress they were so embittered, said a United States 
general, "that one of their first and most insistent poli- 
cies was to demand a reduction of the standing army, 
and under this pressure the strength was fixed and re- 
mained at 25,000 till the Spanish War began." 

Governor Williams had been in the public service 
from 1805 to 1817, excepting two years. He was near 
the close of his fortieth year when he went back to his 
farm to resume the toga and pursue the arts of peace. 
He entered politics with no previous practical training, 
but he was full grown in his convictions and unchanging 
in his creed. He was not, therefore, a good party man 
who exchanged his own conscience for a corporate one 
when an exigency demanded it. 

He made it known early in his career that he would 
never vote to tax one state to build roads, make internal 
improvements or protect the industries of another, and 
he adhered to the doctrine when he was himself a manu- 
facturer. He was eminently fair to others and wished 
no individual or political advantage over other men or 
communities. He was for peace on honorable terms 
and, accordingly, favored the embargo because it bore 
down equally on all classes and sections; but when one 
section of the country through its representatives 
claimed that "interest" alone held the confederation 
together, his repugnance to such sentiments drew from 

134 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

him a confession which showed that he belonged to an- 
other school: "To me the embargo always appeared a 
blessing to this country. True it has always operated 
to prevent us from making money, but that was all that 
was injurious in its operation; and, sir, I was so much a 
fool, had so little knowledge of human nature, as to 
believe that there was patriotism enough, love of coun- 
try enough in the nation to induce its freemen to be will- 
ing to abstain from making money for the good of the 
nation!" It was one of those painful shocks which 
startle unsophisticated and well-reared youths when it 
dawns on them that a lower moral temperature abounds 
outside the paternal roof. 

Fortunately, as Governor, he was enabled to raise 
again his opinion of his fellowmen as political and 
martial animals. When he was called from the ox-team 
to lay hold the helm of state, he found his countrymen 
willing to abstain from making money for a season and 
even to spend what was already made in the service of 
the state and nation. At the very time the Hartford 
convention was sitting with closed doors and deliber- 
ating about withdrawing from the Union while it was in 
a serious war, the state of South Carolina at the sugges- 
tion of its Governor lent the United States $260,000 
and called out a brigade of militia in addition and 
emptied its arsenals for the benefit of the general 
government, and voted $50,000 for further fortifications. 
He found the people to be of one mind. The external 
pressure of the enemy made the harmonious working 
together of all parties an illustration of Plato's idea of 
the best government. In his Republic he likens it to 
the human body, in which are many parts, and so 
coordinated and sympathetic that when a foot or hand 

135 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

or any part is pained, the whole body feels interested 
in bringing relief. Capacity, energy, honesty, unsel- 
fishness, whole-souledness in the leaders who come to 
serve, call out a like spirit in the body of the people. 
It was indeed an hour to be remembered when the Cin- 
cinnatus of Society Hill, Governor Williams, finished 
his work and prepared to return to his farm and family, 
having seen the flames of the war he had helped to 
kindle, extinguished with honor to his country and with 
greater security for the future. He represented the 
Welsh civilization which grew upon the banks of the 
Pedee and extended through him its happiest influence 
to the halls of congress and to the state's executive de- 
partment. The truly great are always humble in the 
hour of victory, and such was the retiring executive's 
feehngs, as he laid aside his official robes, conscious of 
integrity and of patriotic devotion to the state and gen- 
eral government. The closing words of his message 
sounded like a paean of victory, a song of thanksgiving 
and a call to duty: 

"You are assembled, fellow-citizens, under the most 
propitious political circumstances. The peace of the 
nation undisturbed, its character elevated and revered 
abroad, the empire of the laws perfect at home — blessed 
with a government instituted by the people, and ad- 
ministered for their benefit; which like the atmosphere 
pervades everything, yet is nowhere felt, secured alike 
in the full exercise of our religion and our civil rights, 
enjoying all the happiness of legal liberty — the poor 
educated, the educated happy, the people virtuous 
and everywhere industrious, prosperous and contented. 
That such a rich stream of blessing should be poured 

136 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

out to us, at a time when all the nations of the earth are 
made to eat the bread of bitterness and sorrow, calls 
for the most grateful and earnest thanksgivings to the 
great author of every good. Under such circumstances 
you have come up to the appointed house of the people, 
with none but dispositions faithfully to do the work of 
them who sent you, in which may you be so enlightened 
with that * wisdom which is from above' that all your 
acts may advance your personal character and the pub- 
Uc good. 

"David R. Williams." 

Sources: General Williams Diary, O'Neall's Bench 
and Bar, Thomas' Reminiscences, Scribner's Magazine, 
September and October, 1901. The extract from the 
rare Genuine Book of Nullification was furnished by 
Professor Yates Snowden. 



137 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE FACTORY 

PROMINENCE has been given to General Wil- 
liams' connection with poUtics, and it is to con- 
tinue to be important to the end; but before that 
limit is reached, other phases of his activity must be out- 
lined, as fruitful branches growing out of the main trunk, 
until the whole life, rounded and finished, may present 
to view somewhat of its own symmetry and proportion. 
It was his good fortune to enter life well endowed by 
nature and to find a large part of an extensive estate 
awaiting his arrival at years of maturity; and it also 
happened that his stay at school in New England and 
his terms in Congress synchronized with the origin and 
first twenty years' growth of the cotton spinning indus- 
try of that section. The first mill was built in Rhode 
Island in 1790 and according to Gallatin's statistics 
the second was built in 1795, and the third and fourth 
were finished in Massachusetts by 1804. In the next 
three years, ten more were in operation in Rhode Island 
and one in Connecticut, making fifteen in all before 
1808. At that time there were about 8,000 spindles, 
producing about 300,000 pounds of yarn. The Embargo 
Act was in force in 1808 and caused capital engaged in 
commerce to seek other investments. By the beginning 
of 1811, eighty-seven mills were erected or begun in 

138 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

New England, which were to contain 80,000 spindles 
and produce yarn worth $3,240,000. Congressman 
Williams was cognizant of all these developments, but 
it is not probable that he entertained any serious idea of 
becoming a manufacturer before the debate in the 
House in 1808, in which he ventured to say that cotton 
raising was more productive than anything else he had 
ever heard of. He had been selling cotton at an aver- 
age of 28 cents per pound; but the same disturbance 
which ruined commerce also destroyed the cotton 
market. "Where is the cotton crop of 1810?" he asked 
in a speech of 1812, and answered: "A curse to him who 
meddled with it. Where is that of 1811? Rotting at 
home on the hands of the growers, awaiting Orders in 
Council to be revoked." 

The earlier cotton mills had grown up spontaneously, 
in some instances as the fruitage of skill brought over 
from the old country. It was a day of individuality 
and personal initiative. There was no common centre 
around which they clustered and no common impulse 
to bring them into existence, before foreign entangle- 
ments called forth the Embargo Act, and gave to enter- 
prising and patriotic men, keenly sensitive to politics, a 
double motive in becoming manufacturers — the desire 
to share in the profit of turning cheap cotton into high- 
priced cloth, and to contribute to the economic inde- 
pendence of the country. In July, 1812, this sentiment 
found expression at a banquet in Greenville District: 
"An inexhaustible source of independence. The rising 
manufactures of the United States in lieu of British 
goods." In this period were erected the South Caro- 
lina Homespun Company of Charleston* (1808), an- 

•Kohn's "Cotton Mills in South Carolina." 

139 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

other in Greenville District and third in Sumter District. 
The one on Cedar Creek was built, it is generally agreed, 
in 1812, and kept in operation not far from half a cen- 
tury. His own forests and sawmills were at hand to 
furnish whatever was needed in the wood line, and his 
own carpenters were competent for the work of erecting 
the frame building, 50 or 60 x 120 to 200, as additions 
were made to the five-story structure. Weeks were 
consumed in the time of the blockade in hauling the 
machinery by land. When it was ready for use, a super- 
intendent brought from the North managed the mill 
and trained the negro operatives. (C. D. Evans.) At 
a later time the superintendent was a full-blooded 
negro. (DuBose.) 

Absence in the service of his country was a hindrance 
to all his financial interests;* but his tact in organizing 
his forces, even when absent, brought good results. 
Diocletian preferred the pleasure of raising cabbages to 
the honor of governing the Roman empire. General 
Wilhams regarded it a great misfortune to be elected 
governor, at a time when his plantations and enterprises 
demanded his supervision; but he yielded and, depart- 
ing from the precedent set by Cincinnatus, of letting his 
little field lie fallow, he continued his work through 
overseers and superintendents. 

The encouragement given the enterprise by the public 
was sufficient to cause the proprietors, Wilhams and 
Matthews, to multiply the number of spindles three- 
fold. The Columbia Telescope, quoted in Kohn's 
"Water Powers of South Carolina," stated in March, 
1816: "His excellency. Governor Wilhams, in com- 
pany with Mr. Matthews, has erected in the vicinity of 

*While acting as Governor his new sawmill was burnt down, May, 1915. (Botsford.) 

140 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Society Hill a manufactory for spinning cotton yarn. 
The number of spindles at present employed is three or 
four hundred; but the works are now enlarging and it 
is expected a thousand spindles or upwards will be in 
motion in course of the present year. This establish- 
ment so honorable to the founders, promises, we are glad 
to hear, a handsome remuneration of profit. . . . 
Cotton could with advantage be exchanged for yarns, 
as it is now almost universally done in the neighborhood 
of Society Hill." 

To facilitate trade a store was opened in connection 
with the factory under the firm name of Bruce and 
WilUams, but it must be left undecided whether the 
surplus yarn went down the river to Georgetown and 
other places, or was retailed by wagoners in the inland 
nooks and corners, as was done in the Piedmont section. 
The lack of facilities for distributing the products kept 
the mills small or caused them to shut down a part of 
the time. There were other serious drawbacks in the 
mill industry. Three panics occurred in fourteen years, 
and the price of the staple in the earher years made cot- 
ton raising more profitable than turning it into thread. 

About the same time General Williams was enlarging 
his plant, four emigrants from near Providence, Rhode 
Island, Leonard and George Hill, Wm. B. Sheldon and 
John Clark,* came to Spartanburg District and erected 
a factory, and laid the foundation of the present manu- 
facturing industry. In 1819, an orphan boy, WilHam 
Bates, came to the state from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 
and became the first mill builder in Greenville District. 
These all may be considered as the war cotton mills and 
among the last valuable contributions from Rhode 

*Landrum's "History of Spartanburg County." 

141 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

Island. The debt is large but it is partly cancelled by 
the evil which came along with the good. Importa- 
tions of rum from that diminutive commonwealth and 
of raw recruits from Africa must be put down as minus 
quantities in the equation (Chapter III); but educa- 
tionally (Chapter V) and industrially her help was 
timely, beneficial and of permanent value. Occasion- 
ally epidemics of measles or fever disturbed the mill 
management, although one of the best physicians in the 
state had charge of the health department on the 
plantations and at the factory. On the 7th of October, 
1820, General Wilhams wrote to a friend: "The past 
season with us has been in most places extremely 
sickly, though not fatally. A few deaths only have 
occurred. The type of fever has been very mild and 
in no instance, to my knowledge, when assailed with a 
vigorous course of medicine at first, has proved fatal. 
The eastern part of Society Hill now completely exposed 
to the river, has been extremely insalubrious — the wet 
part and on both sides of Cedar Creek for five miles 
down the range of sand hills to Centre Hall, have been 
as healthy as the Warm Spring Mountain, and not a 
case of fever within the limits has occurred." The 
next two summers were classed as sickly and they were 
succeeded by half a dozen healthful years. 

Cotton came down to 9 cents in 1826 and the speed 
of the mill had also been slackened. In his "Statistics 
of 1826," Mills, who had chances to get his facts from 
headquarters, said: "During the war, a very extensive 
cotton factory was estabhshed by General Williams 
which did very well during the Non-intercourse Act; 
but when trade opened again the employment of the 
hands was more profitable in raising cotton than in 

142 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

manufacturing it into cloth. The factory is now 
closed, domestic manufacturing are, however, still 
carried on." The partial suspension did not continue 
long; for further enlargement in the capacity of the 
plant was made within the next two years, new stock- 
holders appeared and the name was changed from the 
Cheraw Union Factory to the Union Manufacturing 
Company of South Carohna. Machinery for making 
coarse woolens and other articles was set up before 1829. 
Early in that year the mill was offering, in the Camden 
Journal, "Cotton yarns, cotton bagging, twine, cotton 
oznaburgs, cotton bagging and negro winter clothing. *' 
They were made of "Cotton of the firmest staple. 
Customers can have their yarns warped into webs of 
any length and width they may desire." 

In the Columbia Telescope, the editorial commenting 
on the mill gives the General's political latitude and 
longitude in this unsettled year: "General WilHams 
will make a thorough experiment on the capacity of 
slave labor for manufacturing. If it shall be successful 
and large capital be invested in this way, we may ex- 
pect an immediate repeal of the tariff. Our northern 
brethren will no more consent to the competition of our 
manufactures than to that of Europe. We are well 
satisfied that whatever direction may be given to the 
capital and labor of the South, if it is successful, will be 
legislated upon for the advantage of the North, without 
the slightest compunction for the injury it may bring 
us. This is the settled pohcy of the majority. " In 1832 
and 1833, the Saluda and Vaucluse factories began to 
attract attention. They also used negro labor, influ- 
enced no doubt by the example and success of the mill 
on Cedar Creek whose proprietor with Col. James 

143 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

Chesnut and others found the experiment successful. 
The Northern Superintendent of the Saluda surprised 
the public with the announcement that the negro oper- 
atives were capable and |41 cheaper than the white 
laborer per year. In August following, General Williams 
retired to Rocky River Springs, a summer retreat some 
thirty miles above Cheraw. It was a sickly season in 
which the mill president's mind was divided between 
anxiety for the health of the superintendent with the oper- 
atives, and concern about increasing the capacity of the 
mill. In writing to his friend. Col. James Chesnut, then 
at Philadelphia, General Williams mentioned the sickness 
of his wife, sister and her grandchildren, and added : 

'* I tremble for the effects of a dry September. . . . 
We are here with very little company. The place has 
been well attended during the last six healthy years; 
but now that every indication is against health even 
life, there are few. It seems as tho' it is useless to fight 
against destiny. ... I shall visit the factory once 
each fortnight. Having arranged everything before I 
left, I hope it will progress properly and believe it will 
unless Mr. Hopkins shall be taken sick; that is the only 
circumstance I cannot hedge around. Should this 
happen, I see no other better course than to stop spin- 
ning till his recovery. It has given me much uneasi- 
ness, indeed it is the only circumstance connected with 
it that does. Every circumstance at my departure was 
what I wished, and help had begun to be familiar with 
our wool business that was getting on well. None had 
arrived from below nor could any prior to the middle 
of September, if then. You may calculate on 600 yards 
of negro winter clothes. Be pleased to inquire the 
prices for each set of (illegible) harness, whether they 

144 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

are made with worsted and cotton harness. Also the 
different prices of such woolen goods as are applicable 
to negro clothes. If you should stumble on a machine 
shop either in Philadelphia or Patterson, I wish you to 
price for [me] looms to weave 42 inches wide and cotton 
and wool cards each. Our friends below here authorized 
me to get as many more as I deem necessary, as the 
crops are gone (in the great freshet). I vote for only 4 
more looms and one (illegible) card. This I understand 
you to consent to. My . . . had no allusion to any- 
thing but looms and the necessary equipage belonging 
to them. Your woman, Mary, promises well as a 
weaver. Not a fire had occurred at the Factory, but 
the damn measles had broke out at least. Any infor- 
mation you may pick up in the factory line, any hint 
you will give, will be very acceptable to your friend, 

"D. R. Williams." 

The freshet of this month had greatly damaged the 
corn and cotton crops on the Pee Dee, but, notwith- 
standing, the immense crop of more than one million 
bales had depressed the price of the fleecy staple. 
Farmers and planters with their usual stoicism were 
apathetic and disposed to endure what they could not 
mend; but in this his last full year on earth, General 
Williams xhibited no little interest and energy in the 
service of his fellow-planters. A letter addressed to a 
government official speaks for itself : 

''Society Hill, Sept. 23, 1829. 
** To the Secretary of the Nervy: 

" I ask leave with this to present you a small sample of 
cotton cordage made here, for bale rope. A pound 

145 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

weight of it makes so many more feet in length than 
hemp cordage of the same size, it is cheaper at 25 cents 
per pound than hemp at 12^ cents, for the particular 
purpose for which it was manufactured. A comparison 
of prices with tarred cordage will of course be much 
more in its favor. I think you will admit that it is a 
beautiful piece of cordage. If you shall see proper to 
test its strength with new hemp rope, you will probably 
find it weaker at first but after both have been so long 
exposed to the weather as to render that made of hemp 
useless, that of cotton will probably be still as good as 
cordage. 

"Cotton fishing lines have been found more durable 
than any other, both in salt and in fresh water; in the 
form of twine, wrought into seines and used in rivers, it 
is alike superior. Coarse shoes made of it and subject 
to the greatest exposure are much more durable than 
those made with flax or hemp. Perhaps it stretches 
too much to be trusted for standing rigging; but for 
running and especially for light sails, it may possibly 
prove superior to cordage made of any other substance. 
I have found it to last longer when served with a coat 
of warm tar. 

*'How has it happened that cotton cordage has not 
been tried even among our smaller craft? Is it not 
wholly owing to a general opinion that it is much more 
costly? Such I confess was mine until a gentleman, 
judging more correctly, ordered 300 weight of bale rope, 
to be made of cotton yarns; for which it has been dis- 
covered to be the cheapest cordage with which we can 
rope our cotton bales. 

"If, contrary to my hopes, it shall be judged unfit 
for rigging of any kind, there is a great variety of other 

146 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

purposes on shipboard, for which small cords are used, 
to which it may be advantageously applied. 

**I am too well satisfied that your private wishes not 
less than your public duties prompt you to the use of 
this great though depressed staple of our common 
country, to suppose it necessary to ask the patronage 
of your department for it. 

"Yours respectfully, 
[Signed] "D. R. Williams." 



The reply of the Secretary of the Navy follows : 

''Navy Department, Oct. 6, 1829. 

"Sir: I have much pleasure in acknowledging the re- 
ceipt of your letter of the 23rd ult., together with a small 
sample of cotton cordage made for bale rope. That 
you may be fully possessed of the views of the depart- 
ment in relation to this great staple of our country for 
naval purposes, I herewith transmit to you a pamphlet 
containing correspondence on the use of cotton sails of 
ships of war, &c. 

"The sample you have sent me I freely acknowledge 
to be a handsome piece of cordage; and the information 
you have communicated, in relation to its strength, 
durability and cost, in comparison with the same 
article made with hemp is very acceptable. A fair 
experiment shall be made of cotton rope for such parts 
of the rigging and outfits of a ship, as appear most suit- 
able, from the knowledge at present possessed of its 
qualities. 

"Your Obt. Servant, 
[Signed] "John Branch." 

147 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

The correspondence continues : 

'' Society Hill, 13 October, 1829. 

"Sir: I request you will accept my acknowledgements 
for the pamphlet you were pleased to send me; as also, 
for your favour of the 5th inst in answer to mine of the 
23d ult. 

"Several gentlemen having become acquainted with 
the contents of your letter, insist that it is alike due to 
the disposition you have manifested, as to the subject 
of your letter, that the letters should be presented to 
the public through the medium of the public prints; 
avering that, both will be very acceptable to the com- 
munity — certainly to those who grow, as well as, to 
those who manufacture cotton. Notwithstanding I 
have not the least doubt you would object to such a 
course, I cannot consider it proper without your con- 
sent — and moreover have it not in my power to do 
so. Having no such purpose when I addressed you, 
I kept no copy of my letter to you. If the subject 
presents itself to your view, as it has to others, I 
shall be pleased to have your consent and a copy 
of my letter for that purpose; unless indeed you shall 
see fit to allow them to appear at once in a Washington 
paper. 

"It would have been much more agreeable to me, to 
have sent you a much larger sample of the cotton rope 
but was limited by the mode of conveyance & had none 
other. 

"Yours respectfully, 

"David R. Williams." 



148 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

**Navy Department, 
''Oct. 2lst, 1829. 
"Honble David R. Williams, Society Hill, S. Ca. 

"Sir: I have had the honour to receive your letter 
of the 13th instant. 

"Agreeably to the suggestions contained in your 
communication a copy of your letter of the 23d ulto is 
herewith transmitted, and the publication of the whole 
correspondence is cheerfully submitted to your dis- 
cretion. 

" I am very respectfully &c. 

"J. B." 

''Society Hill, Slst October, 1829. 

"Sir: I have pleasure in acknowledging your polite 
attention to my request & return you my thanks for 
your obliging compliance therewith. The copy of my 
letter, said to be transmitted with your last, being by 
some accident or inadvertency, not sent, I am yet un- 
able to avail myself of your permission to give your 
sentiments to the public & fearing it may not be per- 
ceived, I venture to state the omission, in the hope you 
will be so good, as to cause it to be sent. 

" I may have placed a very erroneous estimate on this 
whole subject; as few men are able to discriminate cor- 
rectly when self interest bears so strongly: all my re- 
flection and additional facts, however, strengthen this 
error, if such it be & render it to me the more desirable, 
that fair experiment shall estabhsh the truth. Accord- 
ing to the means in my power, two attempts at experi- 
ment, will be made on board of two of the coasting ves- 
sels, which are employed between Georgetown and 
Charleston. You are fully aware how much more sat- 
isfactory any test by your authority will be, than those 

149 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

attempted by any other means & therefore, I hope, will 
excuse me with you, for the trouble my intrusion on 
you may have given. 

"Yours Respectfully, 

"David R. Williams." 

The above letters were sent to the Telescope with the 
accompanying remarks: "It appears to me there is 
too much apathy among the cotton growers generally, 
in relation to the consumption of articles made of that 
material. I believe it might be so increased to affect 
its price, if there was a more zealous determination, 
practically enforced, on the part of the growers only, 
to augment its use. Be this as it may, I am satisfied 
that a great increase of consumption, in the form of 
cordage may be attempted at least, to the consumer as 
to the grower of the raw material. In the early part of 
my life, I had some intercourse with ship, sailors and 
rope-makers and if I have not wholly forgotten every- 
thing in relation to them, there are only a very few pur- 
poses, in which hemp cordage is applied, in which it 
may not be advantageously superseded by that of cot- 
ton. For every object where greater strength is not 
necessary, it is evidently more economical, at the pres- 
ent price of yarns, seeing the proportionate weight of 
tar, J, indispensable in the manufacture of one, is 
wholly saved in the manufacture of the other. The 
durability of cotton compared with hemp and flax is 
decidedly inferior to the former. How far this property 
ought to be counterbalanced by the greater strength of 
the latter at first, is the proper subject of experiment. I 
am sure no one will rejoice more than yourself that Mr. 
Branch has promised a fair experiment shall be made of 
cotton rope." 

150 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

There is nothing extant which shows in a clearer hght 
General WilHams' method of arriving at conclusions. 
"Whatever system I adopt, I want to go up to the hub 
with it," was one of his sayings, and after he had gone 
up to the hub with it, he passed over to the Secretary 
of the Navy and to the public, the results of his investi- 
gations, in the hope that further experiment at Wash- 
ington and less apathy at home might open new avenues 
for the consumption of cotton. "The thanks," said the 
editor of the Telescope, "are due General Williams for 
the enterprise, perseverance, industry and public spirit 
with which he has attempted to revive in some degree 
the drooping energies of this state, which ought to unite 
the common exertions of every citizen." 

These authentic letters reveal the mill situation in 
1829 and the man behind it. The slave had been on 
trial sixteen years as a mill worker, and it is to his credit 
that not a word of disparagement is uttered; but on the 
contrary, "Every thing on my departure was what I 
wished and help had begun to be familiar with the wool 
business that was getting on well" was his testimony. 
The help was already famihar with the cotton business, 
and so expert had it become in making cordage that 
along with the sample sent the Secretary of the Navy 
went the message: "I think you will pronounce it a 
beautiful piece of cordage." This imphed efficiency of 
the slave expressed thirty-six years before emancipation 
is in striking contrast with the scientific conclusions of 
a Northern writer* forty-seven years after that event. 

*An intelligent sojourner in the sunny South softened or discounted Copeland's 
judgment about the negroes by saying, "They were not used as factory operatives 
while slaves." Yes, they were, and were pronounced equal to the whites. With 
apparent incredulity came the reply, "Your writers have never mentioned it." Ad 
examination of De Bow's "Review of 1847, '850 and 1852" will satisfy any one on 

151 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

Without any reverence for the shades of Thaddeus 
Stevens and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and without any 
fear of infringing the Fourteenth Amendment, he brushes 
aside the ten miUion negroes as an impossible source of 
mill laborers of the future, requiring, as he thinks, more 
supervision than the labor is worth. 

The influence of an early cotton mill was local; if it 
was a financial success in a region where water falls 
were abundant, other mills went up. In the more level 
Pee Dee, the first offspring of the Cedar Creek factory, 
was Burnt Factory in Marlboro, but it exerted influ- 
ence in other ways. It was perhaps the first mill which 
secured the aid of capital from Charleston and started 
uphill a stream which has done more for the state than 
the Santee Canal ever did for Charleston. General 
Williams must also be considered the prototype of the 
best mill presidents. He escaped in the Society Hill 
atmosphere the narrowing effects of the planter's life, 
seen in intense individuality and aversion to partner- 
ships and corporations in which the control of one's 
property passes over to others. Agricultural conditions 
were very favorable to the growth of character, but not 
for diversified industry whose profits often exceed those 
of farming. Politically he stood on the platform enun- 
ciated before Calhoun entered Congress: "I am for 
keeping the manufacturer on the same footing as the 
agriculturist. ... I can consent to no additional 
imposition of duty by way of bounty to one description 
of persons at the expense of another equally meritori- 
ous." 

this point so far as South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida are concerned. 
Mr. August Kohn's works are authoritative also. Copeland was on a scientific, not a 
philanthropic, errand. The unpalatable fact must be accepted that freedom lessened 
the value of negroes as laborers in the first fifty years. 

152 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Being in opposition to the tariff and to the extreme 
remedy proposed, he saw a bare possibility of repealing 
the tariff by the use of slave labor in competition with 
Northern operatives. In the cotton field, the negro 
worked for the American and English manufacturers, 
but as a mill hand he would become a competitor. In 
the light of later opinions, General Williams had dis- 
covered a powerful weapon for Southern self-defence. 
It was declared some years later that it was not phi- 
lanthropy but fear of slave competition in manufactur- 
ing cotton, which freed the slaves in West Indies and 
caused certain machinations against the annexation of 
Texas. "Uncle Tom's Cabin," furnished to the mill 
operatives in England, was thought by Charles Francis 
Adams to have defeated the Southern Confederacy; but 
no one has investigated how much the fear of slave 
competition in a cotton Confederacy was a deterrent 
against the recognition of the Southern States. Eng- 
land is a philanthropist when her interest and her 
humanity are not at loggerheads. There were cogent 
reasons, however, which kept the negro in the cotton 
field and prevented the employment of any large num- 
bers in factories. The continued additions of new 
territory made impossible any boom in manufactures 
before the new lands were taken up. Wave after wave 
of emigrants — 8,000 annually — went from the state, 
with their famiUes and possessions. "Land, land, more 
land!" was the cry. "Give us land and negroes and 
we ask no other favors!" Those left behind became 
familiar with this doctrine: "South Carolina, from her 
climate, situation and peculiar institutions, is, and must 
ever continue to be, wholly dependent upon agriculture 
and commerce, not only for her prosperity but for her 

153 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

existence," and also with the counter reply of the 
manufacturer: "Is it not the part of wisdom and of pa- 
triotism to accommodate ourselves to a state of circum- 
stances which is remediless and from which there is no 
escape?" This opposition between the people and the 
factory became tense after General Wilhams' death. 
It did not originate in South Carolina. It was felt 
and expressed in England and by no one more tersely 
than by Webster in 1820. He and Calhoun followed 
the behest of capital in their changes of front on the 
tariff issue. Money rules. Cotton was a great crop 
and with negroes ever increasing in value the plantation 
as an honorable and lucrative employment could have 
no rival. "So commanding is this planting interest," 
said an observant Georgian, "so engrossing the slave 
question, and into such utter insignificance have every 
other question and every other pursuit been driven, 
that he who, being in political life, would publicly 
recommend a diversion of capital and labor from plant- 
ing to manufactures, is in danger of being branded as a 
traitor to Southern rights." 

This belligerent attitude was too irrational to con- 
tinue permanent. Before 1849 the South was pro- 
viding herself with coarse fabrics and shipping yarn 
and cloth. "Doubt it who may," said an orator before 
the South Carohna Institute, "the South is destined 
to become the seat of the cotton manufacture of the 
world. The competition has been forced upon us and 
our people are beginning to be thoroughly aroused from 
their apathy." The tide, indeed, became more favor- 
able to manufacturing in the fifteen years before 1860. 
The state got seven millions of dollars for her cotton 
crop; the manufacturers got fourteen millions as their 

154 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

share of the profits. One pound of superfine sea island 
cotton brought less than a dollar, but its value was 
increased from $70 to |500 in the hands of the manufac- 
turer. The mills near Augusta paid 20 to 30 per cent, 
dividends; near Camden, 15, and at Graniteville, 8 to 
18. 

Governor Perry's explanation of the rise and subsi- 
dence of the feehng against manufacturing was given 
in 1855 in a speech before the most representative 
gathering in the state: "Twenty-five years ago, when 
the Southern States were groaning beneath the exac- 
tions of a most unjust and oppressive tariif, levied not 
for revenue, but for the purpose of fostering Northern 
manufactures, the heart of South Carolina and her 
pride revolted so much at the exactions of the Fed- 
eral Government, that she actually, through her pubUc 
men, discountenanced all attempts to engage in manu- 
factures, for fear that the system of protection might 
become less odious to the people and they would submit 
and become reconciled. Thanks to the intelUgence 
and justice of the American people, the principles of 
free trade are now in the ascendant and we have no 
such apprehensions to scare us from that line of policy 
which every people ought to adopt, of making every 
thing in their power that they consume or need in 
peace or war." Slavery or no slavery the state was 
destined to become manufacturing as well as agricul- 
tural. The idle mill sites, the unutihzed water courses, 
the cotton grown in adjacent fields, and the profits 
realized by manufacturers, were opening eyes to neg- 
lected opportunities. 

As all parties came out on the hither side of the Civil 
War, the industrial element appeared less completely 

155 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

exhausted. The Commonwealth has not been able to 
rear other statesmen of the same large-minded pattern ; 
nor have the colleges produced any Thornwells, Car- 
lisles or Furmans. WilUam Gregg, H. P. Hammett, 
John M. Montgomery, D. E. Converse and others 
revived the cotton industry and with their successors 
made South Carolina second in the galaxy of manufac- 
turing states and invested with new interest orator 
Lumpkin's prediction in 1851 that the South was des- 
tined to be the seat of cotton manufacture of the world. 

Sources: The letter of Colonel Chesnut was kindly 
furnished by Mr. David R. Williams of Camden. The 
correspondence between General Williams and Secre- 
tary Branch was obtained through the courtesy of the 
present Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels. In 
the following will be found interesting references to 
manufacturing: Southern Quarterly Review, January, 
1845, April, 1846; Addresses before the South Carolina 
Institute, 1849, 1851, and 1856; Kohn's Cotton Mills in 
South Carolina, Copeland's The Cotton Manufactur- 
ing Industry in the United States, Landrum's History 
of Spartanburg County, and Crittenden's History of 
Greenville, S. C. A Historical sketch of the rise and 
progress of the cotton manufacturies of the United 
States, found in the October, 1849, De Bow's Review, is 
fuller and more accurate than Gallatin's report, 1810. 



156 



CHAPTER XV 

THE PROBLEM OF TRANSPORTATION AND TRAVEL 

GREAT problems were facing the American 
people after the close of the Revolution. 
Among them were, How to travel expedi- 
tiously over the vast extent of territory, and how to 
cheapen the transportation of farm products to mari- 
time markets. A youth who left Boston in 1795 and 
came to Charleston was surprised to see the harbor filled 
with shipping of all nations, with their flags flapping in 
the breeze, and lined with numerous wharves and ex- 
tensive blocks of well-built warehouses. The men en- 
gaged in this traffic saw the desirability of opening 
better means of communication with the immense back 
country in South and North Carolina and began in 
1786 to lay plans to connect the metropolis with the 
network of rivers which combine to form the Santee. 
At the session of the legislature in 1786 a charter was 
granted, and in March of that year Governor Moultrie 
was chosen president of the corporation, John Rutledge, 
vice-president, and Stephen Drayton, secretary. Work 
was begun in 1793, and at the end of 1800 the first ship 
passed down through the canal to Charleston. 

As editor in 1801-1803, Mr. Wilhams showed more 
interest in the farmers' problems and the waterways 
leading through the canal than in the stirring events of 

157 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

Jefferson's first administration. His remarks about the 
first vessels reaching the city from distant parts of the 
upper country are still entertaining and suggestive. 
One came from near Pinckney Court House, built on 
the owner's land and loaded with his own produce. 
"When the obstructions of the Broad and the Catawba 
shall be removed," said he in his enthusiasm, "the 
superabounding productions of the upper country will 
flow into Charleston in such full tide and with so much 
expedition and so little expense as will lower our mar- 
kets and at the same time fill the pockets of our remote 
fellow-citizens. And what will be equally agreeable, 
gentlemen who have so successfully and at such great 
expense ($40,000 per mile) completed the canal, will 
possess a property which while it contributed to the 
welfare of the state, will yield them an income that will 
amply repay all that they expended in the undertaking 
unequalled in the new world." 

A Mr. James Harrison, who lived in five miles of 
Spartanburg, built a boat, hauled it five miles to the 
Pacolet River, loaded it with 13,000 pounds, and with 
four hands navigated it to Charleston. Events of this 
kind made the editor see visions of glorious prospects 
for the farmers of the back country. 

Wade Hampton's boat also came bearing 124 bales 
of cotton, weighing 234 pounds each. "Twenty men, 
twelve wagons and forty-eight horses would have been 
barely sufficient for the wagonage of this quantity of 
cotton, the difference in cost being greatly in favor of 
the water route." And this he showed by an elaborate 
calculation. 

A remarkable trip to Charleston was made by a boat 
from Lincoln County, North Carolina, which was about 

158 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

300 miles distant by land and near 600 by water. 
Twenty-five bales of cotton and four hogsheads of 
tobacco were the load thus conveyed from ten miles 
of the mountains to Charleston. The crew consisted 
of one man and an assistant. It is said that during 
nine months of a prosperous season 720 boats brought 
70,000 bales of cotton from upper South Carolina to 
Charleston through the canal. 

In 1817, the first year after General Williams re- 
turned to his farm, a scheme for the improvement of 
the navigation of the rivers in the state was accepted 
by the legislature, and $50,000 was appropriated. By 
the fall of 1818, the desire for internal improvement by 
the state having become perceptible, it caused the legis- 
lature to appropriate $250,000 for four successive years. 
In 1819 a Board of Public Works was appointed, of 
which Joel R. Poinsett and Abram Blanding were made 
acting commissioners. 

The following anonymous letter appeared in the first 
half of 1819, written at Chatham, later Cheraw: "Un- 
derstanding that a number of mechanics calculated on 
and are making preparations to locate themselves at 
Chatham, I was induced to examine the river from this 
place to Long Bluff; previous to this I had seen the re- 
port of the engineer of South Carolina, where he had 
stated that the Pedee was navigable by boats drawing 
— feet of water, as far up as the Bluff, and this is fully 
confirmed by General Williams who has made the ex- 
periment in his team boat; this with the full affirmation 
of all the patrons of the river, put it beyond doubt that 
there is four and a half to five feet water up to Long 
Bluff, even at the present low state of the river. I ex- 
amined the river from this place to the Bluff, found 

159 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

some little difficulty at the falls and narrow passages, 
such as trees lying over the river and a few logs. The 
water was generally three and a half to four feet deep 
in the channel, and I soon discovered that the difficulty 
in getting up and down was not in the river itself, but 
in the construction of the boat and their bad manage- 
ment, being for the most part wholly under the manage- 
ment of the blacks. It is now in agitation to have tow- 
boats built of sixty tons, drawing three feet of water, 
when loaded and towed by steam boats as in Savannah 
River." 

By January 1, 1820, the Pee Dee had been cleared 
about half its length and was finished before the close 
of the year by General Williams with his squad of fifty- 
three hands, and it was being pHed by steamboats. 
From July, 1819, to July, 1820, 15,192 bales of cotton 
went down the Pee Dee to Charleston. This was the 
first business year at Cheraw. The freight by land 
per bale was about $2, by water formerly $1.25, now 75 
cents. "The teamboat," said the American Farmer, 
December, 1820, *'estabUshed on that river by our en- 
terprising and public spirited fellow-citizen, General 
Williams, conveys three hundred bales of cotton to 
market, is propelled by eight mules and navigated by 
five hands, and performs a trip from Society Hill to 
Georgetown in fifteen days. This arrangement saves 
poor'people the amount of their taxes on one item, salt"; 
but the teamboat was too slow to compete with its rival 
the steamboat, which was already on the river. While 
the clearing of the river was going on, a steamboat 
named the Pee Dee was being built at Charleston and 
it was able on its trial trip to make five miles per hour 
against strong winds and tide. 

160 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

In February, 1821, the Pee Dee had made its seventh 
trip up and back to Georgetown. It carried each time a 
full load of merchandise and brought back four or five 
hundred bales of cotton. Its descent occupied two days, 
not moving at night, and its ascent six days. This 
bustling activity on the Pee Dee and especially the city 
that might rise at the head of navigation created a fear 
in North Carolina lest Fayetteville should be "done 
over in a commercial point of view." Cheraw had 
grown from four or five houses and about thirty-five 
persons in 1819 to a population of eight hundred in 
1823. The rapidly growing village was honored in 
another way in 1825. LaFayette visited the state by 
invitation and the deputation to receive him was headed 
by Col. J. N. Williams. General Wilhams furnished 
the coach drawn by four horses and rode with his dis- 
tinguished guest. The secretary of General LaFayette 
had this to say of the pretty little town : 

"Twenty-four hours after our departure from Fay- 
etteville we were met, in the midst of a pine forest, by 
the deputation from South Carolina sent to LaFayette. 
This meeting took place on the boundary of the two 
states. Our good and amiable travelling companions 
of North Carolina delivered us to the care of our neigh- 
bors, showing lively expressions of regret at a separation 
which cost us as much as themselves; and we proceeded 
on our way in new carriages, with a new escort and new 
friends to Cheraw, a pretty little town, which had 
hardly four houses five years ago, and now contains 
about 1,500 inhabitants." A reception was given to 
their honored guest that night, and General Wilhams 
was selected to deliver the address of welcome. 

"The route," continues the secretary, "which we 

161 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

had to travel the next day was long and difficult; often 
indeed it was almost impassable. In some places, we 
found it entirely cut off by the overflowing of streams ; 
in others we were able to cross the swamps only by mov- 
ing slowly over a causeway formed by trunks of trees 
badly enough placed side by side. At length we pro- 
ceeded at so slow a pace that night overtook us on the 
road and it grew so dark that many of the horsemen 
belonging to the escort strayed from the road, at a place 
where it was hardly traceable upon the sand, and lost 
themselves in the forest." At some length he tells 
how his own vehicle broke down and was late in arriving 
at the solitary weatherboarded house in the forest 
where both generals were comfortably quartered and 
where all found an excellent supper and good beds. 

General Williams entered the State Senate in Decem- 
ber, 1824, and was made chairman of the Committee 
on Internal Improvements, where he judiciously shelved 
some petitions for cleaning out streams too shallow ever 
to be navigable. Some $11,050 was allotted for the 
great Pee Dee and in December, 1827, the House con- 
curred in the resolution directing Superintendent Bland- 
ing to survey and report on certain works constructed 
by General Williams on Big Pee Dee. This was the 
closing period, too, of the internal improvements which 
had cost the state about two million dollars. 

When David R. WilHams was at school at Rhode 
Island College he persuaded his roommate, Abram 
Blanding, to come South, where he found success and 
honor awaiting him. He was, 1821-27, the superin- 
tendent of these expenditures on the public roads, canals 
and rivers, and in the end brought on himself some sharp 
criticisms. O'Neall in his "Bench and Bar" is an 

162 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

authority on the subject; and General WilHams in the 
legislature palliated the mistakes which had been called 
"a shameful waste of the public money," in this wise: 
"Be the errors (which were unavoidable) ever so great, 
they are redeemed, by the high sense of moral feeling 
which they prove; not an individual concerned in them 
has been guilty of corruption; and for the cost, ample 
consolation may be found in the public motives on 
which it is bottomed, and on the public prosperity 
which it advances. No splendid schemes of govern- 
mental influence and patronage soiled the views of those 
who originated or sustained the system; and surely 
every patron will rejoice when he sees the functions of 
government exerted for their legitimate end, the good 
of the people." 

The canaling amounted to twenty-five miles and the 
falls all told 417 feet. The navigation of the streams 
was extended over 2,000 miles, 700 of which were navi- 
gable by steamboats. Perhaps a quarter of a miUion 
dollars was spent opening new roads and improving 
old ones, which are still in use; but the greater part of 
the expenditure on the rivers was rendered valueless 
as soon as the iron horse began to traverse the state. 
In the "Water Powers of South Carolina" (August 
Kohn) attention is directed to the falls, where the costly 
canals were built, as being now "the basis of the present 
day wealth producing water power development, and 
all of it due to individual effort, without state aid." 
The excitement about these internal improvements was 
called by William Gregg, of cotton factory renown, a 
"convulsion." In 1856, with the announcement that 
a charter of incorporation of a plank road from Charles- 
ton to the mountains had been secured, he marshalled 

163 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

his arguments in favor of plank roads over against 
macadamized and rail roads. Mr. Gregg, like General 
Williams in the previous generation, was the live man 
of the day, and was hstened to with marked attention : 
" In looking back into the history of the last thirty years 
in South Carolina, we find that notwithstanding this 
unpardonable state of things (rude bridges and impassa- 
ble roads), the pubhc mind has occasionally been ex- 
cited, and I may say convulsed on this subject. The 
mania for internal improvement which prevailed in 
1820 in this state can be characterized by no more 
appropriate term than convulsion, for in a state of 
feverish excitement, she expended millions of dollars in 
works for which the country was not prepared and which 
proved to be a waste of money. The amount of capital 
expended in those useless canals would have constructed 
macadamized roads to every important section of our 
State, serving at that period to cheapen the transit of 
produce to market, and at this time as a basis for the 
plank road, so admirably adapted to our country, and 
which in my opinion, is destined to supersede all other 
modes of transit." 

All of which points to the truth, that the veil which 
hid the future from the wisest minds of the past hides 
it from every generation. In 1818-26 the representa- 
tives of the state followed the best lights available. 
Their labor was brought to nought by an invention 
which was revolutionary. William Gregg, who saw 
through the cotton situation so correctly, utterly failed 
as a prognosticator of future internal improvements. 
The plank road was a short-lived experiment, which 
used up the best long-leaf pines and soon ceased to 
be mentioned among profitable and useful investments. 

164 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

The railroad has more than maintained its ground, but 
it cannot be a rival to the newly invented automobile, 
whose utility has proven to be so great that the long- 
standing problem of good roads is being forced to the 
front, as if another "convulsion" was at hand. Will 
some future writer comment upon the present-day 
excitement and how its vast expenditures were ren- 
dered valueless by some new and more expeditious 
method of locomotion? Aviation at present exhibits 
no revolutionary possibilities in the arts of peace. 

Sources: Thomas' Reminiscences, O'Neall's Bench 
and Bar, the Courier, the Carolina Gazette, the American 
Farmer, Records of the State Senate, Sydney J. Cohen 
in the Sunday News. 



165 



CHAPTER XVI 

ADDITIONS TO SOCIETY 

IN A letter written to the Camden Journal (1830) 
some facts were stated which otherwise might have 
been forgotten or left as a hazy tradition. "My 
best days," said General Williams, "have been spent 
in the attempt to improve the agricultural and mechanic 
arts; except a few implements of husbandry, I have no 
reason yet to beUeve I have in its opinion, added any- 
thing to society, but in two instances. I was the first 
person who attempted the use of mules, certainly in 
the Southern States if not in the United States, for the 
purpose of agriculture. If I had then been so easily 
put out of countenance as most young men, I should 
have given it up in despair, for I was ridiculed by old and 
young. I have lived to see the only limit to their use 
is the circumstance of the planter." His claim, it 
must be noticed, is only that he was the first to use the 
mule for agricultural purposes. It was still a question 
whether the ox, strong and docile and nearly as long- 
lived, or the horse, which lived on grain and lost its 
value by bhndness or lameness, were to be the plough 
beast. The fast horse was bound to gain on the slow 
ox in a country of great distances and among a people 
whose inventions have been mostly in time-saving 
devices. Mr. Wilhams knew the value of the ox and 

166 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

kept several yokes to the end of his life, and he knew 
the superiority of the horse over the ox as a plough 
animal. Was he looking for an animal which had the 
good qualities of both? The question cannot be an- 
swered, but it may be assumed that in his visit to 
Connecticut, in 1804-05, where, the tradition is, he pro- 
cured the first animal (N. W. Kirkpatrick) he plied 
the owner with questions, or others who had knowledge 
of the mule, and found sufficient reasons to make the 
experiment on his plantations. That he was laughed 
at and ridiculed by old and young was not an exaggera- 
tion. Some fourteen years after the supposed date of 
the importation of the first jack on the Pee Dee, a com- 
mittee appointed by the Pendleton Agricultural Society 
on "Farm Stock" reported (1818), in words that might 
have been used by General Williams himself, before 
the ignorance and prejudice of his neighbors had been 
removed by facts: "In the opinion of your committee, 
the mule is better calculated to answer the general 
purpose of the farm than either the horse or the ox, as 
uniting the good properties of each with but few of the 
bad. Nothing but ignorance and prejudice could have 
kept the value of this useful animal so long from being 
known among us. It is, however, very strange that 
the most intelligent writers upon farm stock appear and 
acknowledge themselves to be ignorant of them as a 
beast of the plough. . . . The mule is more easily 
raised than the horse, more able to bear heavy burdens, 
equally strong for the draft, more patient, equally 
docile, will live twice or thrice as long, capable of en- 
during much more labor, will do as much work in the 
same time, and will not be more than one half the ex- 
pense, as they will not eat more than one half the grain, 

167 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

will make use of long forage, which the delicacy of the 
horse will reject, and will bear the heat full as well, 
perhaps better. Besides all this, they are able to work 
sooner, and are only in their prime, when the horse has 
become a useless expense by age. From the smallness 
of their foot, they may not answer so well as the horse 
in deep, miry roads, but from the excellence of the hoof, 
they will never require to be shod, except upon long 
journeys over rocky roads." 

The Agricultural Department in Washington was 
appealed to for information about the origin, spread 
and growth of the mule to nearly five millions in num- 
ber, but with all the appropriations for investigation 
and printing, not a line was to be found. Two men in 
the West were referred to for information, but nothing 
has been turned up to throw light on the spread of the 
first mules. References to them are only incidental, 
as the saddle animal which went on and left Absalom 
dangling from a limb, or the fourteen hundred in a 
torpedoed ship, left to swim in mid ocean, unlamented 
and unavenged. 

As General Williams looked back on these early 
experiences with his first trials with the mule he had 
what is designated in the well-known proverb, "the 
sweetest laugh." He lived to see the mule fully 
appreciated in his neighborhood, and when death 
knocked at his door, there were found in his stables two 
carriage horses, one saddle horse, four mares, one jack, 
and sixty-four mules. "I first attempted," he con- 
tinued, "to dam out the inundation of the Pee Dee, 
and consequent thereon, had well nigh been deprived 
of a seat in Congress, because it was thought any man 
who believed he could keep the freshets from the low 

168 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

grounds was too big a fool to go to Congress. Now 
there is nearly as much swamp land reclaimed from the 
freshets in South Carolina as in Mississippi." As has 
already been mentioned, the first and only time Con- 
gressman Williams could have been "deprived" of his 
seat was in the campaign of 1807, but the magnitude of 
the work caused several years to be spent in its execu- 
tion. A part of the year had to be given entirely to his 
growing crop, and his instruments were doubtless the 
shovel, the wheelbarrow, dump cart, wagon, and other 
primitive contrivances. The dam was about five miles 
in length and an average of seven or eight feet in height, 
the base contracting or expanding somewhat with the 
height. A reference made by him intimates that it 
was finished in 1809, as from that time for twenty years 
the freshets had not done so much damage as the one 
of 1829. This calculation is supported by Mills (1823- 
26), who stated the embanking had been done in the 
last fifteen years. It was after 1808 that he began his 
method of resuscitation of old fields, apparently when 
the dam had been finished. The popular rotation at 
this time was, "to cut down and fence the land, to grow 
on them a few years, annually decreasing crops, then 
to give them up to weeds and briers, and finally to 
abandon them in quest of new settlements" ; but another 
rotation and fate, yet to be related, awaited these 
sterile fields. 

The inference is clear that General Williams con- 
sidered his embankments as the first and parent of 
those that followed. In his "Statistics," Mills says: 
"The lowlands of Pedee yield the finest crops of cotton 
and corn. The average crop of lint cotton to the acre 
on these lands, is equal to a bag of three hundred weight; 

169 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

and of corn, about thirty bushels. Such lands are 
valued very high, and will bring from forty to sixty 
dollars per acre. . . . Most of the river swamp is 
under cultivation and protected from freshets. The 
quantity perhaps may be equal to twenty thousand 
acres. Within the last fifteen years extensive embank- 
ments or river swamp land have been effected. Gen. 
D. R. Williams was first to appreciate the value of such 
works, which he planned and executed with admirable 
success. His lands have been thus so perfectly pro- 
tected, that no freshet has covered his plantation for 
years. The consequence has been that he makes much 
larger crops than formerly, and never loses them by 
inundation. " 

Three years later there was a freshet the destructive 
effects of which we have in General Williams' own 
graphic words: 

''Rocky River Springs, Aug. 27, 1829. 
**My dear Colonel [Chesnut]: 

"... My losses* by the freshet exceed in amount 
the aggregate of 20 years back. Three hundred and 
fifty acres of cotton, my new mill and dam, constitute 
the principal items. Some corn, oats, rye, etc., but 
not to a serious extent, save the low lands being my 

*"On the night of the 6th of August," said a writer in the Charleston Courier, "the 
river began to rise and by morning it had risen 30 feet. It continued to rise slowly 
through the 7th, attaining to its greatest height on the 8th — at this time a breach was 
made in the dam of great height and extent, erected by General Williams; the torrent 
which rushed in at this point was so great as to snap in two, like a pipe stem, a large 
log three feet through, which was sucked in across the breach. The tremendous gush 
of water soon washed down the dam under the wings of the mill, which had been erected 
about three years since, and in less than five minutes time, tore up foundation, mill, 
and every thing. Wheeling the mill around, and carrying it into Buckhold's Creek, 
clearing itself a passage through the trees, with the resistlessness of a tornado, and in 
less than two hours thereafter, all the cotton of two adjoining plantations, belonging 
to General Williams, was destroyed." 

170 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

seed for the ensuing crop. There was no fault in the 
construction of either the dam or the mill; the loss of 
them is owing entirely to the great evil of my life and 
disposition — procrastination. Nick and myself exam- 
ined both carefully a few hours before they were de- 
stroyed and both were as tight as I could wish. When 
the water had nearly or quite reached its height, the 
pressure was so great as to break in the plank of the 
side wall ; and as the gush of water was into the mill on 
the sheeting, no further injury would have been re- 
ceived, had there been any one there who knew what 
to do. It was about midnight; I was immediately 
sent to, but Mrs. W. would not allow me to be woke, 
supposing it to be useless. As the dam was injured 
solely by the whirl and of the (?) through the wall, 
which was at the lowest end of the mill, all that was 
necessary to save the whole was to choke the vent and 
thereby lessen the suck, but nothing was done and by 
morning when I got there a little after light, it had 
drawn in so much of the dam as to allow the river to 
break through soon after. I had remarked last winter 
a little appearance of decay on the side wall and had 
only begun to make brick to put in pier two days before 
the wall was destroyed. There was in the barn yard 
in fifty yards of the breach some hundred wagon loads 
of wheat and rye straw with which the breach could 
easily have been checked. The mill stood firm till 
the river had cut down the dam to its foundations; it 
then lifted the mill, whirled it round and drove it up 
the woods faster than I ever saw a steamboat ascend 
the river. The great dam between the mill and the 
barn yard (?) high and (?) feet broad, was in the course 
of three hours totally scattered; this is the only injury 

171 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

the dam sustained; but it has so mortified and broken 
up my spirit 'for a hard job,' I shall never attempt the 
mill again, if I can repair the breach. " 

The hard job was left untouched for nearly a year. 
On the 11th of August, the year following, he wrote to 
Governor Miller: "Three weeks last Monday I began 
to fill the great chasm, made in my dam last August 
and what you saw. I began with forty-four mules and 
thirty-five fellows and altho the excavation was quite 
large enough to make one shrink from the job, nearly 
a year, I could not arrange to suit my other views, earlier. 
Although I have lost nothing of the disposition to enter- 
prise, I freely confess almost all the ability to labor 
has passed from me." In September, he added: "The 
breach is repaired and completed, with three days' 
more work than I anticipated." "My crop," said he 
in October, "is so so — corn abundant — but cotton not 
in the same degree of 'fother of fine chance.' Pumpkins 
and peas without stint or care. " 

The loss by the freshet included about one thousand 
dollars to repair the dam in addition to the loss of the 
mill and three hundred and fifty acres of cotton. If 
Mills' estimate holds good, the loss was three hundred 
and fifty bales of cotton weighing three hundred pounds, 
valued at nine cents a pound — i. e., nine thousand four 
hundred and fifty dollars, less the cost of gathering. 
The blow was felt, but it did not cripple him financially. 
Other plantations were untouched and the corn crop 
was not ruined. Besides the cash a forehanded and 
cautious man always has in reserve for emergencies, 
there was the income from his store, factory and 
smaller rivulets. 

172 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

The interest in rescuing swamp land continued to 
spread over the state through the next three decades, 
and the reclaimed land added in harvest time millions 
of pounds of cotton and of bushels of corn and oats. 
The vagaries of the Pee Dee did not come to an end in 
1829. Now and then when men on its borders began 
to think they had the monster securely chained, it rose 
higher and higher and swept away the labors of men and 
mules. After the great freshet of 1852, a letter from 
Mr. P. K. Mclver to Professor Mims gives a glimpse of 
the Pee Dee in its wrathful moods : 

"The freshet on the Pee Dee has been the most 
destructive ever known at least since my day. Some 
planters I hear have lost their entire crop, besides the 
breaking of dams and washing of land. I hear Mr. T. P. 
Lide's crop is a total loss. John Mclver has lost his 
entire crop of cotton and a part of his corn, and his dam 
broke. All the river planters have suffered more or 
less." 



173 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE FAMILY AND HIS PROVISION FOR ITS FUTURE 

HIS residence known as Centre Hall is associated 
with his early manhood and official honors. 
From the gentle elevation now thickly covered 
with saphngs and from his gentler wife, he went to 
Congress and later as Governor of the state. The home 
at the Factory is associated with General Williams as 
a large planter, manufacturer, an experimenter and as 
the first citizen of the community. "The Factory" 
dwelling was built by General Wilhams and is described 
as "two stories, about 40 feet square, having four rooms 
on each floor and two in the attic; and with broad 
piazzas along both the back and front." (Ames.) 

Besides himself, in his family proper were his wife, 
Elizabeth Witherspoon Wilhams, and his son Nicholas. 
The young man enjoyed excellent privileges in his 
youth and profited by them. Although deprived of 
his mother's care, he developed into a young man of 
amiable and excellent character, and graduated in 1816 
at the South Carolina College, and travelled in Europe 
in company with John Randolph. While at school he 
fell in love with a young lady who lived at the Mulberry 
Plantation near Camden, and was wise enough to make 
his father his confidant, who at once showed himself to 
be an efficient helper in the wooing that continued a 

174 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

number of years. The upshot of it is gleaned in a 
letter to Colonel Chesnut, his partner in the factory, 
and the father of the young lady: 

*' Factory, 1th Oct., 1820. 
*'My dear Colonel [James Chesnut]: 

**. . .1 was exceedingly rejoiced to learn from my 
son that it was your intention when he left you, to 
be here next Sunday week. On that day, as on every 
other, I shall be infinitely delighted to see you. Nicho- 
las improved the first opportunity after his return to 
inform me that he had applied to you and Mrs. Chesnut 
for your consent to his union with your elder daughter, 
and that before you could accede to such a proposition, 
it was desirable first on a subject so interesting to us all. 

**In the close of the Autumn of 1815, he first informed 
me of the existence of an affection on his part which 
would lead him to endeavor to present her to me as his 
wife. Since that period, as far as I have been able to 
judge, that affection, so early and so promptly excited, 
has been constantly increasing; and his conduct has 
been uniformly, too, particular and obvious, to be at 
any time doubtful. The period of his probation has 
been long protracted and if time and uniformity afford 
guarantees in such a case, I trust all that is practicable, 
has been obtained. Certainly there ought not to be a 
doubt on any of our minds, that it is possible to remove. 
Every thing that I have been able to know, has long 
since satisfied me that his affections were steady and 
firmly settled, and in such a behef, if I had never seen 
the object, my course of thinking would have induced 
me to yield without hesitation, to his wishes; but in the 
present case, I am infinitely more fortunate and happy. 

175 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

I do know the object of his attachment and she fills 
my heart and wish perfectly. She is as much the 
object of my choice as she possibly can be of his; for 
sincerely if I had the world of women to choose from, 
she then as certainly as now, would be the selected. 

"Under these circumstances, you cannot fail to be- 
heve that my son's union with your daughter, is not 
merely a circumstance pleasant and desirable to me, 
but has been for some time back and is now, a subject 
of absolute and earnest anxiety. He is my only child, 
not dearer, however, from that circumstance than from 
the moral rectitude and propriety of his deportment. 
He is the ultimate object of all my efforts and industry; 
and possessing my whole heart, of course, cannot be 
sulTered to know a want in my power to gratify. By a 
union with Serena, he will be yet more dear to me, by 
uniting me also to an interesting and intelligent lady, 
whom I have long loved with earnestness and respect; 
and by strengthening those ties of friendship for a fam- 
ily than whom none other do I feel so much regard. 

"Thus, sir, have I opened my whole heart without 
the least reserve, on the most important subject left for 
me in this life, and I am so jealous and anxious for the 
happiness which I so earnestly anticipated, I cannot 
feel at rest till it be substantiated. The pecuniary 
considerations which this topic sometimes gives rise to, 
I shall not touch further than to say that the major is 
now worth at least $100,000 clear of debt. 

"Allow me to add, what is scarcely necessary after 
what I have said, I hope there will be as much pleasure 
to this union among your family, as among mine and 
that it may take place without delay. 

"Be pleased to present me most cordially to your 

176 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

family and say to Serena, I have with earnestness and 
serenity, been long impatient for the right to consider 
her my child; that I shall receive her as such, with the 
utmost delight and pledge her all the fondness and 
affection of a sincere friend and father. I am as usual 
with great personal regards, 

"Yours sincerely, 

"David R. Williams." 

The expected visit of Colonel Chesnut and the con- 
sent of all parties to the wishes of the young couple 
are to be taken for granted ; for in less than two months 
the marriage was celebrated and the two hearts made 
one. The young couple settled down, it is supposed, 
at Centre Hall then belonging to Nicholas, where he 
was born and where as the residence of a South Carolina 
nobleman, it was made historic. Colonel WilHams was 
already a wealthy man and a fine farmer and before 
him and his bride was every promise of a blissful exist- 
ence. A daughter, Mary Serena Chesnut, and a son, 
David Rogerson Williams, Jr., came to bless their 
union, before it was dissolved by her death October, 
1822. 

Only a few months elapsed after the celebration of 
this marriage, before General Williams devised his will 
in a spirit as charming as liis language was lucid and 
interesting. It reads as follows : 

"Feeling aware of the uncertainty of human hfe, 
and being convinced of the propriety of arranging my 
affairs during the possession of my mental faculties, 
being now sound of health both of body and mind, I 

177 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

do hereby publish and declare my last will and testa- 
ment, revoking all others, if any there be. 

"Imprimis: I give and bequeath to my beloved wife, 
Ehzabeth, all my household and kitchen furniture, to- 
gether with my carriage and carriage horses and all the 
negroes now alive and their issue, which she possessed 
at the time of my intermarriage with her, to her and to 
her heirs forever, to be disposed of by her in such man- 
ner as she shall think proper. 

"2ndly. I give and bequeath to my beloved wife, 
Elizabeth, the use during her natural life, of my planta- 
tion called the Upper Quarter, together with the use of 
the horses, mules and hogs, which are attached to the 
same; the plantation and blacksmith tools of that place 
and the use of one half of my sheep and cattle. It is 
to be understood that the portion of my land called the 
Upper Quarter, is contained within the following limits 
and exceptions, viz. From my upper line down Pee 
Dee River to the mouth of Buckhold's Creek, thence up 
said creek and through the lake to where the said creek 
empties into the said lake, thence up said creek to the 
Georgetown River road, thence down said road to 
Chunkey pike, thence up Chunkey pike, to its inter- 
section with my outside line that divides Thomas E. 
Mclver's land, where he lives, from mine; up said line to 
the Darlington road; up said road to where the upper 
line of a tract of land, I purchased from the Commis- 
sioner in Equity, belonging to the estate of Jno. Mcin- 
tosh, Sr., crossed said road; thence along said line, and 
my other outside lines which run through the Pocoson 
and divide Mrs. W. C. Evan's land and mine, to the 
aforesaid river. Within these limits are my cotton 
gin, mill and my Buckhold's Creek saw mill, these and 

178 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

sufficient land for each of the said ponds to flow for the 
full uses of the said mills, are to be excluded from the 
* Upper Quarter.' My grist, sometimes called Smart's 
mill on Buckhold's Creek, is to be considered as an 
appendage to the Upper Quarter and will go with it, 
to the use of my wife; within this mill are all the fixtures 
for ginning cotton and which she, my wife, ought to use 
for that purpose. 

'*3rdly. I give and bequeath to my beloved wife, 
Elizabeth, the use during her natural life, of my late 
residence, known as Centre Hall; and of my house 
servants, named, Sally, Ruth, Doll and Jane, to revert 
at her death to my son and his heirs forever. I con- 
ceive this change of residence, between my son and wife, 
will be mutually convenient to each of them. My es- 
tablishment here, will require the presence of my son; 
while her plantation will be more convenient to her, 
at Centre Hall. The Upper Quarter contains an abund- 
ance of land, to work all the negroes which she of right 
holds, under her father's will, together with those, I 
have now left her; and therefore, on account of inter- 
marriages with the negroes of my son and especially 
on account of her own health, I hope she will not remove 
any of them or herself to the Witherspoon place. 

"4th. I give and bequeath to my beloved wife 
all the rights which may have accrued to me, to Wither- 
spoon's Ferry, the lands I have taken up on the South 
side of Lynch's Creek, at said ferry and those on the 
North side, purchased of Robert Witherspoon, for her 
use and after death to revert to my son and his heirs 
forever. 

"5thly. I give and bequeath to my dear son, Jno. 
N. Williams, all the rest, residue and remainder of my 

179 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

property, both real and personal, to him and to his 
heirs forever. 

"Lastly. I nominate and appoint my beloved wife 
executrix and my dear son executor, of this my last 
Will, recommending to them a continuance of kindness, 
love and confidence. With my blessings to my son, 
I confide to his best care and attention, my beloved 
wife, hoping as a tribute to my affection to him and her, 
he will do every thing in his power for her; and as she 
has never failed in kindness to him and me, he will not 
fail in the tenderest care of her, when she shall be de- 
prived of my protection and love." 

The witnesses were Elias Gregg, John W. Davis and 
D. R. W. Mclver. 

Mrs. EUzabeth Williams was in every respect fitted 
to fill the place of wife, mother and mistress in this 
worthy household. As mistress she attended in con- 
nection with the physician to the cases of sickness among 
the slaves and became an expert in handling the less 
serious local diseases and accidents, for which she had 
the remedies at hand. Several of her letters to sick 
friends or their relatives are yet extant, in which pre- 
scriptions were made and kinds of exercise recom- 
mended. She is better known in her widowhood, after 
she entered with all her energy into the beneficent 
schemes of the neighborhood and state. She was a 
useful member of the Welsh Neck Church, interested in 
the Female Benevolent Society, in the education of 
both boys and girls in backward surroundings and in 
the pastor's family. 

Her pastor, James C. Furman, had the pleasure and 
privilege of sojourning with his small family under the 

180 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

roof of Mrs. Williams at Crowley Hill,* from January 
to December, 1834, while his brethren were arranging 
to build and equip a parsonage. He preached her 
funeral and, being himself a man of almost feminine 
tenderness and purity, he revelled in the subject pre- 
sented by such an occasion. From the manuscript 
used by him so much only is now to be extracted as is 
thought especially to develop her character and con- 
tribute to the subject in hand: "If the possession of an 
uncommon share of respect and affection from a large 
circle of acquaintances, relations and friends, if the 
occupancy of a wide sphere of usefulness and a constant 
readiness for every good word and work, were sufficient 
reasons for a delay of the last messenger, our deceased 
friend had not yet received her summons to depart. 
Had human wisdom been exercised in determining the 
measure of her earthly existence, the utmost limit of 
human life, would have been assigned her; the hearts 
now saddened by her absence, would have been re- 
joicing in her society, and you who as listeners are re- 
ceiving the last lessons of instruction furnished by her 
life and death would, as beholders, have been gathering 
continued lessons from her living example. Had it 
been left to us to decide, we should have prolonged to 
the utmost possible period such an opportunity of hold- 
ing up before our own eyes and the eyes of others her 
bright and beautiful exhibition of whatsoever things 
are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things 
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 
are lovely and whatsoever things are of good report. 
. . . In attempting a description of the character 

*CrowIey Hill is now the home of Mr. N. \V. Kirkpatrick, great-grandson of General 
Williams. 

181 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

of Mrs. Williams, I would remark at the outset that 
whilst it was a striking character, it was as complete 
and well balanced a character as I have ever known. 
No one quality appeared in excess and no defective 
trait met the view, like a blemish in a finished portrait 
made more manifest by contrast with the general style 
of the picture, and awakening a desire in the beholder 
that the hand of the master might be employed to 
retouch and perfect the piece. There was something 
in her very appearance which made at first a decided 
and most favorable impression. The genuine dignity 
of her aspect and manner, the benignant expression of 
her countenance and the peculiarly kind tones of her 
voice, satisfied you at once that before you was an in- 
dividual who would be at home and respected in the 
most refined society, and still accessible to the poorest 
and most depressed. It not unfrequently happens in 
the intercourse of life that we meet with persons whose 
rough exterior and blunt and even forbidding address, 
are incorrect exponents of their real worth. Again we 
meet with others whose external bearing is not in keep- 
ing with their real feelings; whose assumed air and arti- 
ficial tones, and studied phrases, lead you to expect 
gentleness and kindness and fidelity; but who fill up at 
last the description of the Psalmist, 'The words of his 
mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his 
heart; his words were softer than oil, yet were they 
drawn swords.' 

"The character we are now considering was the 
happy medium between the two extremes. Your first 
acquaintance was the perusal of a preface which prom- 
ised much, and your subsequent acquaintance was a 
continued perusal of a volume whose every unfolding 

182 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

leaf justified the promise of its title page. Her acquaint- 
ance was sought and formed by individuals who had 
been led to desire it by the representations of her 
character made by her most admiring, and though in 
such cases of highly excited expectation, there is almost 
always a sense of disappointment experienced when the 
object aimed at has been gained, yet I have never 
known a case in which the experience of personal inter- 
course has not been a delightful realization of previous 
anticipations. Who, when once introduced into her 
society, has ever been heard to say, *I was disappointed 
in Mrs. Williams?' 

"One of the invaluable traits of her character was its 
beautiful transparency. Like the stream whose pure 
water enables you to see the very pebbles which floor 
its channel you saw through her actions to the very 
motives from which they sprang. The Searcher of 
hearts, I firmly believe, saw in her the very attributes 
which drew from the lips of Jesus the encomium passed 
upon Nathaniel 'An Israelite in whom is no guile.' It 
was this which led her friends to feel when her senti- 
ments were once expressed that they knew them per- 
fectly. There was no concealment, no disguise. If 
her approbation was given, its virtue was not lessened 
by a fear that the spirit of flattery had dictated a single 
syllable. If she saw what was wrong and she felt it to 
be her office to speak, what was said was the real opin- 
ion she entertained. Confined to the society of such a 
person, a tale-bearer would have died from the mere 
want of employment. The secrets of those 'who take 
up a report against their neighbors' would have found 
no more encouragement in her bosom than the proposal 
of treason in the heart of a patriot. If a deception 

183 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

might have served a turn, if it might have relieved her 
from a perplexity or gained an advantage, she could 
not have been induced to use it. She would not prac- 
tice an illusion upon a child, nor would she employ 
deception even to administer medicine to the sick. A 
statement of facts from her lips had all the authority of 
ocular demonstration. 

"Combined with this invaluable trait of character 
was a large share of good sense. Her sound judgment 
was displayed in the whole conduct of her life. Her 
mind eminently practical formed a just conception of 
the proprieties of life and enabled her in her personal 
demeanor and her relative connections to pursue a 
course which gave constant evidence of prudent fore- 
thought and wise consideration. 

"^Vhatever position she was called to occupy, what- 
ever demand for action was made upon her, the first 
questions which received her attention were, 'what is 
best to be done ' and ' in what way will it be best done?' 
Her whole life was governed by rules, not for the mere 
sake of professing to be governed by them, but because 
of their practical utility. It led her to a wise distribu- 
tion of her time, and to the assignment of particular 
duties to particular periods. It made her residence the 
abode of neatness, order and regularity. It insured her 
seasons of devotion and secured her ample time for 
reading. (This led her to subject her appetite to disci- 
phne and enabled her by a course of abstinence pro- 
tracted through many years to ward off disease from a 
feeble and delicate constitution.) This feature in her 
character gave great value to her advice. Scarcely an 
emergency could arise, affecting the health, or the estate 
or the moral interests of others, in which advantage 

184 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

might not be derived from her. Some tried and 
successful prescription, some prudent maxim, some 
sound principle of action, would be furnished by her 
ready, thoughtful mind. 'Ointment and perfume re- 
joice the heart; so doth the sweetness of a man's friend 
by hearty counsel.' And how often has this eflect 
occurred with many of those who now hear me. In 
your chambers of sickness you have welcomed her 
approach. In your seasons of hesitancy and doubt, 
her opinion has settled the question and ended the 
difficulty. 

"This good sense which gave value to her advice was 
also seen in the activity of her life. The conviction 
fastened upon her understanding and the impressions 
made upon her feelings did not end there. They became 
motives of action and sooner or later the results were 
seen. In this respect she differed from a large majority 
of the professors of religion. Their religious character 
is made up of much more of passive impressions than of 
active habits. They give much greater signs of emotion 
than she did, but they fail in future exertion. The in- 
fluence of the truth in such persons is hke the influence 
of the shower caught upon the leaves and flowers, 
refreshing somewhat, it is true, and sparkling in the 
sunshine, but afterwards exhaled. The influence of the 
truth on her mind was like that of the rain sinking into 
the earth, penetrating to the roots and to be seen 
afterwards in the wider expansion and deeper color of 
the foliage. . . . This leads me to remark upon her 
uncommon benevolence by which she was distinguished. 
I have already alluded to the evidences of native sweet- 
ness of temper furnished by her very countenance and 
voice. It was impossible to be in her company and 

185 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

hear her speak without a delightful persuasion that you 
were in the presence of one of the kindest as well as 
most candid of human beings. Whatever was her 
natural endowment in this respect, they had no doubt 
received careful parental culture. Deprived of a mother's 
care in her early years, she became the object of her 
father's tenderest and almost indulgent regard. The 
affection thus lavished upon her was ardently recipro- 
cated. An incident is related, illustrating this mutual 
attachment. Her father had taken her to Charleston 
to put her to school. To make the pain of separation 
more tolerable, he remained sometime in the city to 
allow her opportunity to become familiar with her new 
situation so that new associations might come in to fill 
in some degree the vacuum occasioned by absence. But 
when the appointed day for his departure had arrived 
she clung to him and entreated him not to leave her. 
'Father,' she said, T am your only (child), and if I 
should die you would be left all alone.' Her plea pre- 
vailed and she was permitted to return home. She has 
been known to allude to this as an instance of the great 
indulgence allowed her in her childhood and as an unwise 
surrender of an opportunity for scholastic improve- 
ment, the loss of which she often regretted. 
To do unto others as she desired others to do unto her 
was the principle which swayed her words and actions. 
Kindness to inferiors, liberality to the poor, fidelity in 
her friendships and the most pleasing courtesy to all, 
marked the even tenor of her way. Without children 
of her own her conjugal connection brought her into the 
exercise of the maternal office, a sphere of action which 
was afterwards increased by the co-residence of General 
Williams' family and the family of his sister, Mrs. 

186 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Mary Ann Williams Mclver. With several young per- 
sons thus brought under her care, the real amiability 
of her temper was fairly tested and the testimony of 
one of the individuals alluded to would, I am persuaded, 
be the testimony of all, 'She never said an unkind word 
to me.' Hers was one of the few cases to which the 
remark of a pithy writer will apply. 'A mother-in-law 
is sometimes a mother indeed.' 

** It affords me pleasure in this connection to make an 
extract from a manuscript of the sister-in-law, Mrs. 
Mclver, the sentiments of which do equal honor to 
both. After mentioning a severe affliction which had 
deprived her of the use of all her powers for weeks, she 
says: 'Lord, enable me to profit by thy correction; 
keep me from dishonoring thy holy name. Whilst I 
feel all the faculties of body failing, the mind very much 
enfeebled and impaired, still I feel thy goodness renewed 
every morning and repeated every evening. 
My Father, and my Friend, be the same to my dear 
children and grand-children. . . . Reward my more 
than sister, my mother, for the thousand instances of 
affection and care shown me by her untiring patience 
and affection displayed at all times . . . thanks to 
God — and dear sister too. . . . She is everything to 
me, child, friend, sister, mother. Next to my God, His 
cause, her I would not hurt. . . .' " 

At one season her pastor and his family enjoyed the 
most hospitable entertainment in her house for a suc- 
cession of months. And this was the beginning of a 
series of the most delicate attentions continued for 
several years. Her annual contributions of money 
toward the objects specified was by hundreds. If a 
church was to be built, the solicitors of aid never ap- 

187 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

pealed to her in vain; and it is an interesting thought 
that the nucleus of the fund provided for the erection 
of a new church of worship here, is the sum of several 
hundred dollars, an unsought donation from her hands.* 
The pleasure enjoyed by several persons, how many I 
know not, of reading religious papers was furnished at 
her cost. And in multiplied instances her bounty has 
clothed the poor, and supplied their tables, has minis- 
tered wood in winter and medicine in sickness. If a 
case of distress came to her knowledge, with all her 
equanimity, she was restless until provision was made 
for its relief. With much truth might she have used 
the language of Job: "When the ear heard me then it 
blessed me; because I delivered the poor that cried, the 
fatherless and him that had none to help him. The 
blessings of Him that was ready to perish came upon 
me; and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy." 
Like the dew which descends in silence and darkness 
and is revealed by the morning light, her various bene- 
factions will not be fully known till the dawn of the 
eternal day. 

She survived General WilUams ten years and found 
herself well provided for by her affectionate husband. 
** He was as kind as he was virtuous " was the sententious 
judgment she passed upon her deceased companion. 
And it was no idle phrasing of beautiful words. In the 
midst of her death scene, she asked of one near her bed, 
if it was not the 16th of the month, and after an interval 
she inquired if she knew the reason of her asking that 
question, adding to-morrow will be ten years since Mr. 
Williams' death. After making some inquiries about 
her female friends who had sat up with her, "she re- 

*She left a legacy of about $1,000 to the association. 

188 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

quested a book to be brought to her. It was a beauti- 
ful copy of the Bible. Calling for one who was par- 
ticularly dear to her (Nicholas, then in his 44th year) 
and addressing him, she said : I wish you to accept this 
Bible as your mother's last best gift. I do not give it 
to you because I do not beheve you read it; but this is 
one you can put into your pocket, and I wanted to give 
you something as a token of my affection and I have 
nothing as suitable as this. I hope it will be the same 
comfort to you that it has been to me these many years, 
and particularly in this last trying hour. I have one 
request to make and I know S. will join me in it, and 
that is you will read a portion of it daily and I think be- 
fore three months are past you will thank your mother 
for making the request. You have seen, she added, 
my weak hopes and trembling faith, but I would not 
exchange the comfort this book has given me for all the 
world." 



189 



CHAPTER XVIII 

HIS INTEREST IN EDUCATION 

THE elevation which the St. David's Society 
selected for the site of the St. David's Academy 
received the name, "Society Hill." Nearly a 
century ago Mills described it as "not the rus in urbe nor 
urbs in rure, but a group of houses and trees commixed." 
The present village, owing to its competitive surround- 
ings, has not kept pace with the growth in population 
and in modern improvements, but it has been made 
immortal by its early history, by the succession of noble 
men and women who lived there and by the two oldest 
institutions, the Welsh Neck Church (1738) and the 
St. David's Society (1777). In the latter body, whose 
organization, objects in view and constitutional rules 
are found in Chapter III, David Rogerson WiUiams 
was enrolled on May 31, 1798, and elected warden, also 
a member of the Standing Committee, which had visi- 
torial powers over the teachers and scholars, and the 
authority to repair the buildings, to engage and con- 
tract with teachers for the year, and to supervise the 
treasurer and secretary. Being an absent member for 
three years, he was made warden in anticipation of his 
return which took place before the July meeting, 1803. 
In April following he attended with the Standing 
Committee a public examination of the scholars and 

190 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

found their progress honorable both to the teachers 
and to themselves. Before the May meeting in 1805 
he made a tour of the Northern states in reference to 
which, Peter Edwards, the efficient chairman of the 
Standing Committee, reported: "They authorized Mr. 
David R. Williams, one of their body, during an excur- 
sion he was about to make into the Northern states, to 
procure a teacher for the Academy, and directed him 
to offer for this purpose five hundred dollars; and in 
consequence of an application made by him to Mr. 
Messer, president of Rhode Island College, your com- 
mittee received a letter from that gentleman informing 
them that for that sum he could not procure a proper 
person." Having filled the office of warden five con- 
secutive years he was made president of the Society in 
1808, and with a full quorum of members of the Society, 
he joined in July in the procession of the teachers and 
scholars to the church and attended the exhibition. 
In his second term as warden, an office with more re- 
sponsibility than that of the presidency, he was made 
chairman of a committee to inspect the lot and form an 
opinion whether any portion of it could be judiciously 
sold, or exchanged, and on what terms. The chairman, 
now Lieutenant-Colonel, reported that in their opinion, 
"it is consistent with the interests of the Society to 
dispose of one portion of their land lying westward of 
Church Avenue and northward of the Camden road, in 
exchange for the lot of land on which the store of Messrs. 
House & Company is now situated . . . that it 
is also expedient to dispose of to the highest bidder 
the remaining part . . . reserving therefrom the 
Spring." On his motion Doctor Hawes was permitted 
to erect and hold for twenty years at an annual rental 

191 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

of one cent, a house upon the Society's property, for 
medical and surgical purposes, and was himself as head 
of a committee given full authority to protect the school's 
"spring north of the liberty pole on Society Hill." A 
committee previously appointed to consider the raising 
of a fund, reported July, 1810, and submitted this 
resolution : 

"Resolved, That the Society petition the legislature 
for permission to draw a lottery and also to give them 
the jail and acre of land on which it stands on the Long 
Bluff for the purpose of assisting in the raising of a 
fund." The report was agreed to and Colonel Williams 
nominated the committee to carry the resolution into 
effect and also to prepare a scheme for the lottery (to 
be approved by the Society) and to superintend the 
drawing of the same. He was then added to the 
committee. No further mention in the minutes is made 
of the lottery, and they had slept too long on their rights 
to secure the abandoned jail; but the raising of a fund 
received an impetus from another quarter. The build- 
ing was destroyed by fire on February 1, 1813, in the 
very midst of the war and money stringency. A meet- 
ing was held the next day; and at a subsequent larger 
meeting, D. R. Williams, John D. Witherspoon and 
Peter Edwards were authorized to erect another build- 
ing. In the meantime the school met in the church, 
and by motion of Colonel Williams the windows and 
doors were caused to be shut every evening and the 
church to be swept and the benches properly arranged 
every Friday evening. On the 3d of July, 1813, the 
minutes contain this statement: "Col. Williams, presi- 
dent of the Society, having been appointed Brigadier 
General in the army of the United States and not being 

192 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

present, Maj. Peter Edwards was called to the chair. 
A letter of resignation of the presidency was presented," 
etc. In May, 1814, General Williams, chairman of 
the Building Committee in a season of individual em- 
barrassment and national calamity, reported that the 
finished wooden building cost $1,210, of which $178 
was not yet paid. This amount was covered by sub- 
scriptions; and some years later the chairman presented 
the Society $98, apparently to pay for globes and other 
apparatus. 

As Governor of the state he was ex-officio a trustee of 
the South Carolina College, and as such he joined in the 
commencement processions (1815-1816) as he had done 
at Society Hill. With the exception of one four years' 
term he served the state as a trustee of the college the 
remainder of his life. While attending a commence- 
ment in Columbia he was attracted to one of the speak- 
ers, William Smith, with whom an acquaintance led the 
latter to become teacher of the St. David's Academy 
about 1814. He resigned at the end of 1818 and went 
to France to study medicine. He returned to Society 
Hill and became General Williams' family and planta- 
tion physician. Shortly after his return the Library 
Society was formed* and the Library building, now 
nearly one hundred years old, erected. All its records 
perished; and the brief tradition that Doctor Smith 
was authorized to purchase the books makes it probable 
that the movers in the enterprise were also at the head 
of the school interest. In 1823 General Williams 
moved in the Society's meeting that the Academy be 
transferred to a situation offered by D. R. W. Mclver, 

*About the year 1822. (Mrs. Furman E. Wilson.) In 1835 Mr. Elias Gregg was 
librarian and John K. Mclver was an officer. 

193 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

a little to the southward and westward of Doctor 
Smith's residence and on the opposite side of the road. 

The education of the children of the poor received 
early and earnest consideration. The Society and the 
teacher cared for five or more annually, and the desire 
to protect children of improvident parents caused the 
good women of Society Hill and neighborhood to or- 
ganize the Female Benevolent Society, the object of 
which was to secure a lot and house suitable for a Fe- 
male School of high order, presided over by a female 
teacher. It was not intended to exclude pay pupils, 
but their benevolence was stirred by "the ignorance 
and indolence of many poor children around us who are 
either destitute of parents to guide them, or whose par- 
ents are not in circumstances to furnish them the first 
principles of such instruction as is necessary for their 
well being." One of the leading objects was to encour- 
age virtuous industry in any kind of useful labor. The 
Society founded the school and kept it up twelve or 
fourteen years and finally in 1833 the Female Academy 
was given in exchange for the Male Academy with its 
ground and one hundred dollars. It is to be regretted 
that so little is known about this benevolent under- 
taking. Mrs. Elizabeth Williams was one of its sup- 
porters, and with her husband's acquaintance with the 
work of both societies, he could reiterate in his old age 
what he said as Governor: "The poor are educated and 
the educated are happy." 

His associates in his third of a century of gratuitous 
educational work were William Falconer, Thomas 
Park, William, John and Martin DeWitt, Evander 
Mclver, Edward Edwards, Samuel Wilds, Jr. and Sr., 
Oliver Hawes, Thomas, Samuel and Jesse Evans, 

194 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Thomas Powe, Adam Marshall, Benjamin Mosely, 
Gen. R. Ellison, William Zimmerman, Frame Woods, 
John Kirvin, John F. Wilson, Moses Sanders, T. Chap- 
man, George Wilds, James and William House, J. 
Cantey, J. E. Mclver, P. K. Mclver, Jesse DuBose, 
John D. Witherspoon, John Davis, J. W. Davis, Alex- 
ander Sparks, Major Pouncey, Charles DeWitt, Rob- 
inson Carloss, David and Elias Gregg, W. L. Thomas, 
J. J. Evans, E. Hanford, E. R. Mclver, Alexander 
Mclver, Peter Edwards, John M. McCullough, Thomas 
Smith, J. N. WiUiams, W. Mclver, J. J. Marshall, 
T. H. Edwards, Charles M. DeWitt, Wm. A. Snipes and 
others. 

In the library building was held the last meeting of 
the St. David's Society at which General Williams was 
present. John D. Witherspoon, J. J. Evans, J. K. 
Mclver, Alexander Sparks, D. R. W. Mclver, J. N. 
Williams, EUas Gregg and the president were managing 
a village school with less than fifty boys and girls. With 
talent and financial ability sufficient to endow and direct 
a college, they willingly employed their time and talent 
in securing teachers, in keeping the building repaired, 
and in paying the annual expenses. Through a com- 
mittee they regulated the details, named the kinds of 
punishments and their limits, took care of the building 
with its furniture, and in one case unanimously prose- 
cuted a man who went to the school and without 
provocation struck the teacher. General Williams was 
only one of the number engaged in this laudable but 
not spectacular work. He was fashioned in a measure 
in the atmosphere of the St. David's Society in his 
early days, and in turn as the leading citizen, he magni- 
fied its work and influence. He had no children to 

195 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

educate, and there was no lack of talent to take his 
place. He had filled the office of Governor, Congress- 
man and Major-General, but he held on to his place 
in the Society, not for its honor, nor the pleasure of 
social intercourse, nor because he was an original Jeff er- 
sonian Democrat; it was from a sense of the importance 
of primary education. He had the knack — whether by 
intuition or analytical powers of mind — of stripping a 
subject of its accidents and of finding and knowing the 
primal and fundamental, the essence of things. This 
he did in politics, agriculture, manufacturing and in 
education. His interest in education and not, as it is 
commonly received of aged men, the love of money, 
was the last of his endowments to wither under the 
touch of time and the weight of years. Taken in 
connection with his large interests and his growing 
influence in every department open to capable and 
ambitious men, it is a phenomenon not often seen and 
not easy of explanation. God had joined together igno- 
rance and poverty, but by a diffusion of knowledge he 
believed they might be exchanged for skill and plenty. 
See in the last chapter what his educational efforts pre- 
ceded or led to. 



196 



CHAPTER XIX 

COTTON OIL FACTORY 

THE announcement made in 1829 and in 1859 
that a cotton seed huller had been perfected 
caused several scribes to examine old files of 
papers to see to whom the rightful credit belonged. On 
the basis of their reports as found in the Columbia 
Telescope, American Farmer, Southern Rural Gentleman, 
Pee Dee Gazette, DeBow's Review and the Farmer and 
Planter, a brief account of the efforts leading to the 
invention will show how General Williams was sand- 
wiched in between the chemists and inventors who 
preceded him and the monumental indifference of the 
planters of the next thirty years, absorbed in politics 
and cotton raising. 

The cotton gin, invented in 1793, gave an impetus to 
cotton culture such as had not been seen in 5,000 years; 
and the seed, whose oleaginous qualities had long been 
known, was piling up in larger quantities every year. 
The oft-repeated story that cotton seed was dumped 
into streams must be taken with some reservation. The 
value of the seed was quickly discovered in neighbor- 
hoods led by thoughtful men, while the knowledge of 
its worth spread more slowly in others. How early the 
farmers in South Carolina used it as a cow food or as a 
fertilizer direct from the gin is not so well known as the 

197 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

fact that agricultural information did not travel over 
the state with the same speed as political news. 

In 1804 a chemist and druggist of Philadelphia, Dr. 
George Hunter, made some experiment with cotton 
seed oil, and being impressed with the possibilities of 
the venture, went to New Orleans to put up a factory, 
but not being pleased with the situation abandoned the 
undertaking. Another Northerner ordered in 1806 nine 
bushels of cotton seed from Charleston, and caused an 
experiment to be made to ascertain the quality of the 
oil it would yield by the process usually practiced in 
extracting oil from flax seed. It proved to be both 
abundant and of a quality quite equal, if not superior, 
to flax seed oil for painting. About 1818 a Colonel 
Clarke made experiments with oil of cotton for burning 
in lamps and pronounced it after actual comparison 
with spermacetic oil "decidedly the best." Oil was 
now selling at 80 cents a gallon. 

"Early in 1822," said Dr. M. W. Philips, an ex-South 
Carohnian, "an article appeared in the Pee Dee Ga- 
zette, a paper published near the home where General 
Williams lived, called public attention to cotton seed 
oil and calculated that a clear income of $6,000,000 
could then be added to Southern resources by making 
oil," and then "the remainder of the seed is equal in 
value to corn meal for feeding cattle." "I remember 
distinctly," continued Mr. Philips, "of seeing the 
huller at work in S. C. before I saw Mississippi. . . . 
Having distinct remembrance of this oil matter, I 
stated to several editors what was my recollection. 
After writing the article, I concluded I would turn to 
mine ancient archives and bring to hght the facts. I 
append here sundry extracts from Southern papers and 

198 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

request those now living who remember these news- 
papers or who may have any proof to the contrary of 
what I here state, to bring it forth or let it be understood 
that what I produce are facts. Gen. D. R. Williams 
has relations living who can perhaps produce all proof 
needed. He was once Governor of South Carolina, 
member of Congress, a prolific writer, his heart set on 
agriculture and all the improvements of the day and a 
man who deserves more a monument to his memory, 
by the tillers of Carolina's soil, than all their battle 
host. " What Dr. Philips had been trying to establish 
about General Williams is not clear, but the next from 
his archives lands us at the beginning of real progress 
in the oil industry — the advertisement of Follet and 
Smith in 1829 of their cotton seed huller. Hitherto 
machinery for expressing flax seed oil or castor bean oil 
had been used in experiments, but now one made for the 
purpose is on the market. This firm at Petersburg, 
Virginia, was soon in correspondence with General 
Williams and made a liberal trial offer of their machine. 
He had accepted the offer and ordered the machine in 
August, 1829: "A machine is to be sent me on account 
of the patentees to be tried sixty days and if I do not 
purchase, to be paid for according to estimate of the 
benefit received in the trial. If purchased the machine 
to cost $150, the patent rights less $250, but has much 
less to be settled hereafter, they looking to other cir- 
cumstances for their reward, in my setting it up as they 
avow. I have written to Jonathan Coit of New Lon- 
don, near whom the oil mill is now making by a Mr. 
Gideon P., for information as to the process, quantity, 
&c. Also to a Mr. Ruggles of N. Y. patentees of an 
invention for purifying oil of all kinds, for information 

199 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

concerning his discovery." Thus wrote General Wil- 
Hams to Colonel Chesnut. About a month later Gen- 
eral Williams, being surprised at the silence of the 
newspaper over so important a matter, wrote to the 
Telescope in a style intended to excite interest in the 
cotton seed huller: "I cannot doubt that you have seen 
the account, somewhere since published in a Petersburg 
paper, of the machine invented for hulling cotton seed. 
If my hopes have not deceived my judgment, on the 
consequences which may result from this discovery, it 
is a subject of just surprise that its immediate impor- 
tance to the Southern States has induced no notice of 
it by the editors of the pubUc prints. 

"Every one who has had anything to do with cotton 
seed, knows it contains a great deal of oil. Many 
persons have, from time to time, made efforts to extract 
the oil; I among the number to no valuable purpose. 
The thought had never occurred to me that it might be 
hulled like rice, so as to separate the kernels which 
contain all the oil. This is now accomplished by 
Messrs. Follet and Smith, with all the facility as to 
attendance and execution, of grinding corn. Their in- 
vention as I understand it, consists of a granite cylinder, 
revolving within convex pieces of the same substance, 
faced and placed in a particular manner. A hopper 
over the stone supplies the seed; a wire sieve under it 
separates the hull from the kernel, dropping through 
the current of air, from a wind fan, is delivered clean 
and ready for the press. 

"Every 1,000 pounds of green seed cotton will yield 
30 bushels of seed, three bushels of kernels, two gallons 
of oil. This, in its raw state, has long been known to 
be only a little inferior to flax seed oil, for all purposes 

200 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

to which this last has been appHed. The price, true 
value and ornament which this produces throughout 
the country, are objects of so much importance that 
a cheaper substance is extremely desirable. The proc- 
ess of expressing cotton seed oil is said to be less ex- 
pensive than that of flax seed. As paint oil alone, the 
cotton seed oil must be very valuable, at least quite 
enough so to induce attention; the great consumption 
of it, however, will probably be for light and machinery, 
if it can be rendered suitable for these objects, without 
too much expense, of which as yet I have no doubt. 
. . . These are some of the circumstances on which 
I have flattered myself that a new and general source 
of income is opening to our abused country, and may 
probably be considered by you, as entitled to your 
attention. To discover new resources of the state, to 
point to paths of prosperity not yet trodden, altho' 
not so animating as to lead the charge of political con- 
flict, is not less appropriate to your profession and may 
leave an abiding consolation, to hearts like yours, alive 
to public prosperity. 

"I presume then, I am not about to ask a reluctant 
service of you. As one of your readers, then, I shall 
be very glad to see the results of such reflections and 
inquiries as you may be disposed to give in relation to 
the general views this subject may present; and particu- 
larly, as the relative value of cotton seed oil, compared 
with other oils, and the quantity which may be pro- 
duced in the Southern country. You are near the 
sources of great knowledge; and possibly, at a word, 
might have all your questions answered; perhaps, 
either for practical objects, or as an amusement by 
chemical experiments, it may have been already satis- 

201 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

factorily tested, how far the glutenous matter, in some 
vegetables and other oils, may be extracted so as to 
render them suitable for lamps and machinery, without 
deducting too much from their quality; or the process 
being too expensive. 

"Tell us whence comes the oil for lamps and machin- 
ery? How many thousands are appropriated by Con- 
gress for Light Houses alone? What does it cost the 
City of Charleston and Columbia to light their streets? 
What number of gallons are annually exported? How 
many whalemen fitted out? What seas and oceans 
vexed* to procure it? Oil for lamps and machinery 
has become a great and increasing necessary article of 
consumption every where. If the enterprising Yan- 
kees find it profitable to explore all the waters of the 
mighty deep for it, absurd indeed would it be for us to 
suffer our exhaustless stock, lying as it were at every 
man's door, from which we may obtain it, to remain 
longer unemployed. For myself these inquiries might 
have been made privately. You can scarcely be at a 
loss to conjecture why I prefer to see them spread 
before the public. I believe our cotton seed which has 
been hitherto used only as a manure, may be converted 
into oil and sold at a great profit; certain am I, if you 
will instruct the cotton planter how he may add |10 
value to the labor which now produces him a bale of 
cotton, you will do him a great favor and be moreover 
the conductor of a reasonable reward to the inventor of 
a machine which will probably rank in the cotton 
country second only to the Whitney Gin." 

The cotton seed huller reached the Pee Dee, was set 
up and tested with the seed made in 1829. So well 

*A reminiscence of Horace. 

202 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

pleased was General Williams that he indited the follow- 
ing warm commendation of the machine, along with 
certain observations and predictions, found in the 
Camden Journal and in the "Williams Family": 

'* Messrs. Follet and Smith, Petersburg, Va. 

* 'Gentlemen : Your favor reached me in due course of 
the mail. I have not replied earlier, because our oil 
mill was so nearly finished. I preferred to delay the 
acknowledgement till I could speak from facts resulting 
from my own experiments; and although these have 
not been carried out as far as I propose, they are quite 
enough as to satisfy my own mind fully. In relation to 
your 'cotton seed huller', I am gratified to be able to say, 
it performs all that you have promised for it, and, 
moreover, is so easily comprehended, ours has been set 
up and put into operation by persons who never saw 
one before. Our oil mill is after the Dutch mode, of 
pestles and wedges. Our grinding stones are not quite 
four feet in diameter and twelve inches thick. The 
cotton seed kernels are so much easier to grind than 
flax seed, these stones as small as they are, may easily 
grind for two pair of pestles and wedges. That the 
whole process is simple and not difficult to understand 
you will infer when I tell you, no person concerned 
about ours, except myself, has ever seen an oil mill 
before. You are aware that I attempted last winter 
to enlist the public generally in favor of your invention 
by a few pieces in the Columbia Telescope, signed 
Cotton Planter. These were founded on information 
with which I have been favored. You may be certain 
of the satisfaction I feel in having tested by actual 
experiment that those statements were perfectly cor- 

203 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

rect. In relation to the uses to which cotton seed oil 
may be applied, it is almost superfluous to include 
painting, as that fact is fully settled. The same proc- 
ess which is indispensable to make flax seed oil dry 
produces the same effect with this. There are good 
judges who pronounce it to have a better body and 
therefore superior; considering to what extent the adul- 
teration of linseed oil has been carried, owing to decrease 
of material, it is not hazardous to say that cotton seed 
oil ought to be preferred. Without resorting to any of 
the patented methods of refining oil, I have succeeded 
by a very simple and cheap process to refine our oil so 
as to answer all the purposes of the best sperm oil, in 
our cotton factory. Our superintendent, Mr. Hopkins, 
has been very careful to compare it with as good sperm 
oil as I ever saw, and is entirely satisfied with its equal- 
ity with it. In its present state we find it burns very 
well by a little attention to the wick. By other means 
than those I have as yet used, I am satisfied it will be 
much superior to the best animal oil lamps, it being 
entirely inodorous, a circumstance of great importance 
in establishments requiring many lights." 

The remainder of the letter deals with another matter 
of no little importance to the state and the South: "The 
residue of the kernels, after the oil is expressed, called 
oil cake, is excellent for stock generally, particularly 
for milch cows and pigs. If your invention could do 
nothing more than convert cotton seed into wholesome 
food for stock, it would still be, in my opinion, of infi- 
nite importance to the whole Southern country. The 
planter who makes four bags of cotton to the hand, will 
now with your aid, have in addition to his grain, forty 

204 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

bushels of good food also per hand more than equal to 
that quantity of oats. In New England, it is preferred 
pound for pound to oats. No man is so dull as not to 
see the consequence to his people and to his purse, must 
be alike agreeable, it being a self-demonstrable proposi- 
tion, there is no scarcity, where milk and pigs are abund- 
ant. The only use to which we can now apply cotton 
seed is for manure. 

"The same quantity fed to stock may with ordinary 
care that every planter is competent to bestow, elabo- 
rate ten times the quantity. Thus much for the facts. 
You will not consider me an enthusiast when I add I 
have not the slightest doubt that the time will come 
when, owing primarily to your invention, cotton seed 
oil will also enter largely into the food of man. From 
these considerations, I earnestly hope you may receive 
a very handsome remuneration for your discovery ; more 
you ought not to ask." 

To his desire to enlist the interest of the public in the 
invention which was to open a new source of income, we 
owe these letters which bring into clear light the very 
beginning of successful prosecution of the oil business 
in South Carolina. He was surprised at the silence of 
the newspapers regarding so great a discovery; and his 
astonishment must have been greater, when his an- 
nouncement that the machine was all that it claimed to 
be fell on unresponsive ears. Why did planters, at 
whose gins large piles of cotton seed were heaped an- 
nually, not hail the huller as a friend in time of need? 

Influential opposition met the huller on the threshold. 
His article in the Telescope, advocating its general use 
in the belief that it was to be a source of profit, was 
followed in the same paper with a confident argument 

205 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

that the seed was worth more as a fertiUzer; and the 
same conditions which made cotton manufactories 
languish also operated against cotton oil factories. 
The professors in the college were giving tone to society 
and leading, not to new paths of agricultural progress 
but in the charge of political conflict, and the tariff 
burden made the conservative farmers more conserva- 
tive in resisting innovations. 

His opportunity of experimenting was limited to less 
than a year, but in that time he found a use for his oil 
in lighting his home and factory, painting his establish- 
ment, and a feed in his meal which would banish scar- 
city by filling the milk pail and fattening pigs. Just 
one month before his exit, October 17, 1830, he wrote 
to his friend Ghesnut: "You forgot your oil barrels 
again, when your wagons came over. We shall recom- 
mence making oil in a few days and barrels are just as 
necessary as cotton seed. Magwood has promised me 
some. They are not to be had here. I do not expect 
to make less, before again stop, unless again the water 
shall fail, than 4,000 gallons at least. Now it is no 
immaterial affair to find casks to put it in. A new 
difficulty arose shortly after the water was let into the 
oil mill canal. The entire foundation of the mill and 
near about it, is of the coarsest and most porous sand, 
this suffered the water to ouse through it and rise in the 
oil mill. I had suspected it, and ditched around the 
mill and puddled it properly; but the water passed 
under the puddling and rises in the mill cellar. I am 
now opening a large ditch around it, below the founda- 
tion, for the purpose of laying down the trunks, with 
the bottom board knocked off, that we had made to 
convey the water to the water wheel, so as to carry off 

206 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

the water; and into which I shall insert a small spout 
from under the mill foundation so as to lead off the water 
from the cellar, if any shall still get into it. If this 
fails, I shall be hors de combat. But for this circum- 
stance, the oil mill would have been at work. When it 
shall be, I pray you send for some oil. I am satisfied 
from actual proof, it is better for outside work than 
linseed, I have not tried it for inside yet. All the 
buildings belonging to the establishment are painted 
and as I assure you, they look well at a distance at least. 
When will you come and see them? The approval of 
anybody is encouraging — ^yours is to me, animating in 
the highest degree.'* 

Absorbed in farming, manufacturing cotton, cotton 
seed products and in politics, he had at the same time, 
unlike the majority of his contemporaries, the power 
to **contract the sight of his mind as well as dilate it.** 
He saw in the oil and meal products a substantial addi- 
tion to the planter's income. The drawbacks were 
getting barrels and finding and opening markets for the 
oil, both of which tasks he was fitted to grapple with 
successfully. He was not a discoverer or inventor in 
the oil business; he may not have built the first oil mill 
in the state — not counting the castor oil concerns in 
several districts — but he was certainly the first one who 
built a mill, experimented, satisfied himself of its real 
value to the large planter and openly proclaimed in the 
face of an unwilling public the great value of the in- 
vention. Nevertheless his success was so completely 
forgotten that Governor Seabrook in 1848 and Senator 
Hammond in 1849 did not mention oil in their memor- 
able addresses before the farmers as one of the "capabili- 
ties" of South Carolina Agriculture. The cotton mill 

207 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

interest revived but the cotton oil industry passed out 
of mind. His loss to the state at the juncture was 
serious in any aspect of the situation; but he above all 
others was needed to show the way and open a market 
for oil and meal. Fifty years thereafter were to roll 
around with the growing bulk of cotton seed a loss to 
the state and to the world, except as an animal food in 
some localities and as a fertihzer valued at less than 
fifteen cents per bushel by some observant planters. 

After his death a few notices are found about spo- 
radic efforts in Florida, New Jersey and Rhode Island, 
with cotton seed quoted at 15 cents per bushel and oil at 
80 cents per gallon. In July, 1859, Charles Cist, statis- 
tician of Cincinnati, wrote an elaborate article in De- 
Bow's Review to show that the enormous value of the 
cotton crop, great as it was, was not near what it should 
be, were the oil expressed from the seed. The 3,600,000 
bales of the last crop produced 3,960,000,000 pounds of 
seed, which contained 87,120,000 gallons worth 88 cents, 
and 762,000 tons of oil cake, both oil and cake, valued 
at 1106,177,500. The nature and uses of the oil had 
been ascertained in respect to pharmaceutical and 
lubricatory purposes and a higher value was put on it 
than any other manufactured in the United States. 
WiUiam R. Fee of Cincinnati had succeeded in con- 
structing a cotton seed huller upon "a new principle" 
of cracking the hulls and separating them from the 
kernels. It had been "brought to the last degree of 
efficiency and perfection and is held under letters pat- 
ent." The oil business was assuming some dimensions 
in New Orleans and it was causing discussions in the 
more eastern papers as to whom the credit of the in- 
vention belonged. The editor of the Farmer and Planter, 

208 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Columbia, S. C, summed up the situation in a stand- 
pat way: "The very fact that the invention has been 
so long before the public and produced so little fruit, is 
sufTicient evidence of its Uttle value, to our mind; and 
now that every body has become willing to admit the 
value of the cotton seeds as a manure, it will hardly 
pay to convert it into oil and cake." 

The first postbellum mill* in the state was built in 
Columbia in 1868, but it was soon closed by falling prices 
and want of a market — a fate which could not have 
overtaken General Williams' cotton seed huller, and 
other appUances, in the day of small things. Another 
decade passed before modern mills began their career of 
so great expansion that in 1914 there were in South Caro- 
lina 100 establishments, $1,452,027 invested, $15,347,711 
in the value of the products, 411,272 tons crushed, 
46,980 linters. The highest price paid per ton of seed 
was $20.92. 

*Mr. Christopher Fitzsimons in News and Courier, centennial edition. 



209 



CHAPTER XX 

HIS MAIN BUSINESS 

FIVE plantations were under the supervision of 
General Williams after he had made liberal 
gifts to his sister and her sons and to his own 
son Nicholas. The aggregate number of acres at any 
particular time is not easily ascertained, because of 
additions and subtractions. In its largest dimensions, 
the estate included nine plantations with an aggregate 
of about 12,950 acres; but in the last years of his life, 
the five plantations, probably over 7,000 acres, com- 
prised the whole estate on the Pee Dee. He kept a 
colony of slaves and an overseer, white or colored, 
at the Upper Quarter, Middle Quarter, Barn plantation, 
Plumbfield and at the Factory. He had no automo- 
biles to skim over his weary miles of roads, but was well 
supplied with vehicles and saddle horses. He was an 
early riser, and in the work season was accustomed to 
mount his horse, with umbrella and other articles needed 
in a sudden change of the weather, strapped to his 
saddle. With his shotgun or rifle and dogs, he went 
through the woods and byways to the field where his 
hands and overseer had begun the day's work. It re- 
quired no effort on his part as he went by the homes of 
his friends, situated off the roads, to pass the morning 
salutation or inquire after the health of the family. 

210 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Powerful lungs aided him in the Northern army and 
served him well in transmitting orders to his hands over 
his level stretches of fields. Game had become scarce 
in the new century, but the partridge, fox, wild turkey 
and the deer* have continued to this day in diminished 
numbers. It is assumed that he was of too active tem- 
perament to be a fisherman even on the Pee Dee where 
his friend David Gregg had extensive arrangements for 
catching shad and sturgeon which came up the river. 
There is not a solitary hint that he was ever a disciple 
of Izaak Walton. For some twenty-five years he re- 
tired in summer and autumn, after the crops were laid 
by, to the Rocky River Springs in North Carolina, 
where he had a summer residence, a billiard table, 
hounds for hunting deer and congenial neighbors from 
the Pee Dee for society. Hospitality was as much a 
part of plantation life as slavery or the culture of corn 
or cotton. "The latch hangs on the outside of the 
door" was the proverbial invitation to neighbors. 
There were great plenty in the homes and great skill in 
the kitchen. The barnyard with its fowls and eggs, the 
dairy with its milk and butter, the pantry with its 
precious stores and the smokehouse with its hams and 
delicacies, were all brought under requisition to serve 
the family and its friends. That was true of the whole 
state, but at Society Hill, Judge Wilds, General Wil- 
liams, Judge Evans, Doctor Smith, John Campbell, 
Robert Campbell, John McQueen, John D. Wither- 
spoon, Isaac D. Wilson, Samuel Sparks, Thos. Falconer, 
Caleb Coker, Dr. John K. Mclver, James H. Mcintosh, 

•In conversation with Rev. W. M Hartin of Society Hill and Mr. Bright Williamson 
of Darlington it transpired that one had killed a wild turkey and the other several 
deer in the late season. 

211 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

Boykin Witherspoon, the Greggs, McCullough, et al.— 
all had the same beaten biscuit, the same cooking, beef- 
steak, gumbo, dry cooked rice, fried chicken, peach, 
strawberry, blackberry preserves, all had their clothes 
brushed, their horses groomed alike; all were gentlemen. 
All used wines and liquors. One or two got drunk. 
(DuBose.) General Williams was a temperate man but 
not a puritan; he retained all his life a love for social 
sports and pastimes. In his last year he wrote to a friend : 
"I hope some or all your precious daughters will give 
me a chance to be lively soon. I long to be at a wedding 
or dance or frolic of some sort or other, no great odds 
which, if I get a chance to laugh and be happy. To 
laugh and be fat is a primary duty of life." 

"The house of General WiUiams," said the Camden 
Journal, "was the home of hospitahty." In 1827 
Martin Van Buren, later President of the United States, 
spent some time at the "Factory." The friends who had 
supported him in politics and those with whom he had 
been associated while serving the public were always 
near to him, especially W. H. Crawford, John Randolph, 
and Nathaniel Macon. His connections by marriage 
and in business also opened out opportunities of social 
and kindly intercourse. His library, kept in an upper 
room of the factory (DuBose), where he collected and 
devoured useful books and newspapers, political and 
agricultural, served as his ^povTtd'ojp'ov, his thinking shop, 
when he had time to withdraw from outside mat- 
ters. From this retired spot as well as from his own 
domicile, one must suppose many of his lengthy com- 
munications to the public were sent forth. He was a 
prolific writer, and his communications, which often cost 
him much labor, must be attributed to the same cause 

212 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

which made him enjoy the hvehness and hilarity of a 
banquet, wedding or froUc — his social temperament. 
He read what his fellow citizens had to say and, having 
profited more or less, he was prompted to reciprocate 
the favor. 

Little can be said about the names of his overseers. 
One of the candidates for the episcopal ofTice on the farm 
was a young Irishman named John Ross. His ad- 
vances not being received as cordially as expected, on 
account of the neck of a bottle protruding from his 
pocket, "Be jabers," he exclaimed, when he reaUzed 
what was objectionable, "here she goes," and smashed 
the bottle. He was sent to Bunker Hill and given a 
trial. He continued in the office through the re- 
mainder of the lives of both father and son, until the 
great revolution in plantation methods and economics 
came (1865). The faithful overseer's health having 
become impaired, he was furloughed two months in 
1848 and, mounted on one of the General's fine horses, 
he rode away to the famous Sulphur Springs of Virginia, 
and returned in robust condition. His salary was about 
$350 a year with board and a horse furnished. The 
position was so confirmed in the confidence of em- 
ployer and employee that Ross had to his credit in 1865 
with the WilUams' estate $15,000. (DuBose.) 

The slaves inherited, less than one hundred in num- 
ber, grew perhaps fivefold in his lifetime by natural 
increase or purchase. Deducting those he had given 
his son and Mrs. Williams, two hundred and forty-five 
remained in his possession. 

It required no little forethought and industry to pro- 
vide for the large household, seventy horses and mules, 
six hundred to a thousand hogs, two hundred cattle, 

213 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

fifty sheep, and to be continually increasing the estate 
in value, in spite of panics which swept away the 
property of his friends, and the price of cotton which 
fluctuated from twenty-eight to nine cents. In the 
first place and foremost in importance, he planned to 
get full sustenance for everything from his own fields. 
His plantations, with his hands and stock, formed a 
tiny empire, in which corn, corn, corn and more corn, 
was the foundation of plenty and prosperity. "Feed- 
ing" was the word which stood out before him day and 
night. "What shall I eat, what shall I drink, and 
wherewithal shall I be clothed?" was so expanded that 
it embraced his family, his hands and all the animals on 
the place. How to feed them properly and profitably 
was the primal problem. Out of this necessity came 
the exhibition of his ingenuity. First the introduction 
of the mule or half-ass, as the Greeks called it, with its 
patient temperament and constitution which fitted it 
to resist hard treatment and gave it immunity to many 
equine diseases. Next came the embankments, miles in 
length, to protect his growing crops from the swollen 
Pee Dee. This was finished (almost certainly) before 
the crop of 1809 was planted, and made the large acrea- 
age in cotton, corn, peas and pumpkins become a 
veritable cornucopia, a horn of plenty. In 1808 he 
began a system of feeding the thinner land which in 
less than two decades made it equal to any on the 
plantation. The factory was intended to diminish the 
cost of clothing his extensive establishment and to earn 
a second profit on the finished products. The last 
development which grew out of his farming interests 
was seen in his last year's oil mill, by which his cotton 
seed was to furnish light, machine oil, paint, cow food 

214 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

and fertilizer for himself and others. Sixty bushelsjof 
corn at least had to be provided weekly for human 
consumption, the shelling of which, before a machine 
was invented, used up one night periodically till bed- 
time, in the tedious process; and a superannuated 
negro man was generally detailed to carry back and 
forth the grain and meal with an ox-team. For his 
seventy horses corn was his mainstay; but the cereal 
was used with studied economy, supplemented by 
native grasses, fields of rye and oats, and by stacks of 
nutritious peavine hay. Perhaps his greatest expendi- 
ture of corn was in the feeding of his swine. We are 
left in ignorance of how he lessened the pressure on his 
corn crib in winter, but the oats and pea fields with 
acorns in the fall prepared his shotes in a measure for 
the thousands of bushels of corn to be poured into the 
fattening pen. The curtain was lifted twice from his 
corn cribs and smokehouses, and the sight vouchsafed 
indicated a crop of corn above ten thousand bushels and 
the amplest provision in the meat line. Five hundred 
hogs were fattened and slaughtered in 1828, and in 
February, 1831, there were 495 on the plantations, with 
twenty-seven thousand pounds of bacon in the smoke- 
house. About seven hundred pounds of bacon went 
out of his smokehouse every week, or over thirty-five 
thousand pounds per year. And yet there was no 
scarcity in his day. Besides meal and bacon, there 
were also peas, pumpkins, sweet potatoes and fresh beef 
to supplement, or to be a substitute for the usual ra- 
tions. 

The lowlands protected against the freshets averaged 
thirty bushels of corn per acre (Mills) and some of the 
best acres more than doubled that amount. The 

215 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

greatest number of bushels from a measured acre was 
seventy-five, while his thinner land produced more or 
less than ten bushels to the acre. Hon, William Elliott 
preached and practised a different doctrine. Except in 
the inner parts of the state where freight rates were 
high, he thought it paid to buy some corn and provisions 
in order to make more rice or cotton, a practice still not 
uncommon; but General Williams strengthened as he 
grew older, in his resolution, that the Goddess of 
Plenty should have her temple and the homage due her 
in his little kingdom. Let it be emphasized that he 
never became so devoted to cotton that he depended on 
others to raise supplies for his forces, not even when he 
was getting over eighty dollars for his three-hundred- 
pound bales. He had in the latter years of his life 
about sixty-four ploughs, which, according to the usual 
allowance of twenty-five acres to each horse or mule, 
cultivated sixteen hundred acres; but under his inten- 
sive method of preparation, and frequent cultivation, 
with a view to the improvement of the land, twelve 
hundred acres may be nearer the actual acreage. The 
proportion in corn and in cotton varied somewhat in 
answer to political and economic conditions. In 1828 
the Milledgeville Statesman said that General Wil- 
liams' entire crop of the previous year was two hundred 
bales, and all of it was spun into yarn at great profit. 
This estimate is below the traditional number attrib- 
uted to his scientific farming; but the larger crops of his 
son Nicholas were probably the cause of some exaggera- 
tion as to the earlier times. In the absence of more 
details about the number of bales raised by him or 
turned into cloth or cordage at the factory, we must be 
content with the knowledge that he was wise in pian- 

216 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

ning, energetic in executing and successful in securing 
good results. Words do not now convey the same ideas 
as they did when a bale was light (average being about 
three hundred and ten pounds), the cotton more difficult 
to pick, and the proportion of lint smaller. He under- 
stood economic laws and respected them. He did not 
save at the spigot and lose at the bung; nor was he 
penny wise and pound foolish. What he touched he 
turned into gold, because he touched it wisely. "The 
thoughts of the dihgent tend only to plenteousness." 

Fortunately, we are better acquainted with his 
method of raising cotton — related below in his own 
words. He demanded a properly prepared seed bed, 
an early planting that the season for producing might 
be as long as possible, frequent shallow ploughing and 
constant hoeing, amounting to eight or nine workings 
by the first of August. He experimented with cotton 
at various distances and decided that maturity was 
hastened by leaving plants close in the drill and that 
distance was essential to the length and strength of the 
staple. His cotton was planted in rows, according to 
the richness of the soil, from three to seven feet apart, 
and at a distance of four or five inches up to three feet 
in the drills. His experiments were not another name 
for guessing by visual observation. He measured his 
ground, carefully gathered and weighed what came 
from his trial patches. He picked twenty-three hun- 
dred pounds of seed cotton from his best acre, which 
enjoyed the extreme distance of seven-foot rows with 
stalks three feet apart in the drills. 

He was a frequent and valued contributor to agri- 
cultural papers whose files are now defective. Nothing 
has been found from him on corn growing, inconceiv- 

217 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

able as it is that he was silent on so important a crop. 
The American Farmer of Baltimore entered his home in 
the second decade, with its thought provoking treat- 
ment of live agricultural subjects. After having prof- 
ited by the experience of other writers, he decided in 
1825 to lay before the readers of the Farmer, under an 
assumed name, his method of raising cotton. It is an 
interesting bird's eye view of how a successful farmer, 
within thirty years after the invention of the cotton 
gin, was struggling like an athlete with his own indi- 
vidual problems and sharing with his fellows whatever 
skill he had acquired. It may be called a lecture, 
didactic in tone: 

"The cotton plant, while in the seed leaf, is very 
tender, perhaps as much so, as any, of the most tender, 
of our garden vegetables; when it has arrived to what 
we call the cotton leaf, it is probably more hardy than 
any of them. The product of an acre of rich land is 
increased, in my opinion, more by the length of time it 
is allowed to grow, than from any other single circum- 
stance; hence it is advisable to plant as early as the 
absence of frost will admit; and being in its early stage 
very tender, too much care and labor, in preparing the 
ground for the seed, can hardly be given. My method 
is to plant in drills, on beds made with the plough and 
horse rake or harrow, according to the nature and cir- 
cumstances of the soil. Land that will produce ten 
bushels of corn to the acre, can yield 500 pounds of 
seed cotton. The drills on such land I make three feet 
apart; and thin out the cotton, to the width of the hand 
between the stalks. If the drills were nearer, the prod- 
uct might be somewhat greater, but the use of the 
plough would be more difficult. From land that has 

218 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

yielded me seventy-five bushels of corn per acre, I have 
weighed twenty-three hundreds of seed cotton. This 
was planted at seven feet distance between the drills 
and thinned out to three feet between the stalks; these 
extremes embrace the entire distances of which I have 
any experience and by which I am governed. When I 
have land sufTicient for these changes, my course of 
crops is cotton, corn and small grain. My first process 
is to run furrows as deep with No. 1| plough, as two 
mules can draw it, at a distance from each other that 
I mean to have my cotton rows. Into these furrows I 
draw, with the weeding hoe (we call it listing), all the 
stubble and vegetable matter between the rows; hav- 
ing sprinkled plaister on it, I break up the balks, inter- 
vals between the rows, as deep as possible, with de- 
scription of plough. When this is done on old land, or 
land pretty clear of stumps, I prepare and finish these 
beds, thus thrown together with the plough, generally 
with the horse rake, by running them on the beds back- 
ward and forward, until the surface be pulverized 
sufficiently to receive the seed. When in new ground, 
abounding in stumps, the clods are broken and the 
surface prepared, with the weeding hoe. If the land 
should be very stiff and cloddy, I prepare the beds with 
harrows instead of horse rakes. My harrows are made 
in two parts, attached together by hooks and hinges 
and when put together form an angle less than a right 
angle triangle; when at work, the joints and hinges, 
being over the middle of the beds, admit the teeth to 
touch and work the whole surface, sides as well as the 
tops of the beds at once. When the beds are too dry 
and hard, I find it advantageous to secure on each leaf 
of the harrow, a block of wood, more or less heavy, 

219 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

according to the nature and state of the ground; these 
are easily worked by two mules. My horse rakes are 
made of a piece of lumber two feet and a half long, 
five inches thick and twelve inches wide, worked off at 
the tw^o ends, and hollowed out in the middle so as to be 
in a semicircular form, five inches by six inches when 
finished; into the hollow edge two rows of iron teeth, 
half an inch thick, three quarters wide, to show five 
inches, are inserted; the front row placed opposite the 
intervals of the back row; the rows three inches apart 
and the teeth four inches in the row from each other; 
on the top of the semicircular piece, fasten two pieces of 
oak four feet long three by two inches in size, resem- 
bling somewhat the hind hounds of a wagon, with a nose 
iron, where the two forward ends are joined together, 
for the swingle tree, above these attach two handles, 
like a common plough. This horse rake I have found 
very advantageous, not only in preparing the beds for 
the seeds, but also in covering them when dropped in 
the drills. When the ground is in proper order for 
work, they finish the beds in a beautiful and most 
regular manner. The seed may be covered with them 
better than in any other way; and as they expedite the 
work very much, it rarely happens that I may not wait 
for the ground to be in the best possible state for cover- 
ing. A man and a mule may prepare with it from six 
to ten acres a day, and can cover as much, according to 
the state of the ground and width of the rows. The 
beds being thus made and the season for planting at 
hand, I proceed to open the drills; this I do with a drill 
plough. It is made by fastening to the bottom of a 
piece of two inch plank, ten inches wide, two feet and 
a half long, square at the hind end and pointed at the 

220 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

front one, a piece of oak, by way of keel, of the same 
length, one inch thick at the bottom edge and three at 
the upper. The bottom edge is armed with an iron 
plate, one half an inch thick, so pointed and squared at 
the front end, as to enter the socket of a coulter of the 
common form, the upper edge of which is wedged 
securely in the beam, the upper fixtures are like those 
of a plough secured to a plank by a helve; the keel 
ought not to be more than two inches deep. This 
plough is very light and is worked by one mule, walking 
on top the beds and can open as many drills in a day as 
a horse rake can cover. For several years past I have 
omitted to cover the seed at the time of dropping it. 
In stiff land, the advantage results from lessening the 
chances of the soil being "caked" over it by hard rains, 
through which the cotton cannot penetrate, and which 
must be raked some way or be replanted. In light 
soils, the rain which falls after the seed is dropped will 
cover them sufficiently, but if this does not happen, by 
having a proper number of horse rakes, each being 
capable of covering ten acres in the day, the whole crop 
may be covered in two days, and of course commenced 
at the very moment when the ground is in the best 
possible state for the operation. By this mode of 
covering, the whole surface of the bed is stirred and 
dressed nicely, later after the seed is dropped, and in a 
more expeditious manner than any other I have ever 
tried. 

"Having planted my cotton, which I ought perhaps 
to have said I invariably begin on the last of March or 
the first day of April, I begin the culture of it as soon as 
the progress of other business will admit, whether it 
has got up or not. The first operation is to hoe it. 

221 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

This is done the first time by shaving down the beds, as 
near to the plants and as hght as possible; if there be 
weeds or grass too near the plant to be removed by the 
hoe, they must be picked out with the fingers; this is 
indispensable, to save time and labor afterwards. Im- 
mediately after the cotton is hoed, that is, a sufficient 
quantity to admit the ploughs ; not waiting to complete 
the first hoeing, I commence the first ploughing; this 
is done by running one furrow as close to the cotton 
and as shallow as possible, of each side of the rows, 
throwing the furrow slice from the cotton. All the 
corn I have not hoed previous to the hoeing of the cot- 
ton (I prefer there should be none) I now hoe; and 
then commence the second hoeing of cotton. This done 
by chopping through the rows of cotton, either with the 
corner of the hoe or to its full width, if the soil be rich, 
leaving the cotton in bunches of four stalks between 
the chops, with fine soil drawn up to the sides of the 
beds. Now follow the second ploughing: reverse the 
furrow slice of the first plowing, by throwing it towards 
the cotton, by one furrow on each side of the rows, the 
mould board next to the cotton of course; the middles 
are then to be flushed up, either with shovel, skimmer, 
or double iron mould board ploughs, according to the 
state of the weather; if it be dry, I prefer the two first, 
if wet the last is best. Thus I proceed alternately 
hoeing, always drawing up the soil after the first hoe- 
ing and ploughing; always with the mould board to the 
cotton after the first ploughing, until the limbs have 
grown so much as to prevent both hoe and plough from 
passing between them, without breaking them off. This 
happens generally by the first of August, by which time 
I have generally hoed the cotton eight or nine times. I 

222 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

find it necessary to hoe such a portion of the corn, at 
the end of each hoeing of the cotton, as will give to it a 
sufficient quantity of work to keep it clean. I also 
endeavor to have each series of ploughing begin at a 
little distance farther from both cotton and corn than 
that which preceded it; thus cutting the principal roots 
of both, at each ploughing, farther from the stalk than 
it was cut before. By this process, I believe the small 
fibers are increased, and additional mouths opened, 
through which the plants draw their nourishnlent. 

"I conclude from examination of the roots, that they 
grow into small knots when cut, and issue from there, 
and from between these and the stalks, small fibres, 
other than would issue, if they were not cut, of course 
they ought not to be cut back, or a second time nearer 
to the stalk than they were previously. The last 
operation in the cultivation of cotton with the plough, 
should be to run a furrow with a bull tongue or with a 
coulter plough in the middle between the rows and as 
deep as may be; these ploughs being very narrow, may 
be passed between the rows, without injury, later than 
any other. Except this furrow I endeavor to cultivate 
as shallow as possible. Cotton should be thinned after 
the first hoeing. At the second hoeing I chop through 
the drills, leaving it in bunches; at the third hoeing, I 
reduce these bunches to two or even one stalk, if the 
plant be forward or the hoeing backward and the 
weather favorable, afterwards the thinning should be 
continued so as to prevent its being crowded; accord- 
ing to the richness of the soil, I leave it more or less 
distant in the drills; of this each planter must neces- 
sarily judge and concerning which many differ. In my 
opinion, the aggregate product of a field of cotton is 

223 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

veiy little affected in quantity by thinning, particularly 
if it be rich soil; but the quality of the staple, which 
is of as much importance as the quantity certainly 
is very materially. My experiments on this part 
of the business, have satisfied me this opinion is 
correct. 

"As early as the first of August, I top the cotton. 
This is done by pinching off the bud. I some times 
extend this to the limbs also; when the plant is large 
and flourishing, and the pods backward, I think it may 
be done with advantage. If the seasons be moist, the 
plant luxuriant in growth, appearing full of sap, sucker- 
ing is very proper; but if these indications have sub- 
sided, by the plant appearing more woody and the 
leaves have become small or are decreasing fast, sucker- 
ing is unnecessary or may be omitted without much 
loss. I do not doubt that topping and suckering tend 
to increase the quantity some and quality much and 
therefore should be done as extensively as circumstances 
will admit; the last, however, is so tedious and our 
crops are now so large, but a small portion of them 
can be thus treated. 

"When I have open land sufficient, I have found it 
advantageous to follow the cotton crop with one of 
corn and this last with small grain, taking care to 
plough the corn, the two or three last times the way I 
mean to have my cotton rows when the field is next 
planted with cotton, thus avoiding the tedious opera- 
tion of laying off the rows. Corn grows kindly after 
cotton, and with less labor. Cotton succeeds to small 
grain advantageously because of the quantity of vege- 
table matter left for listing into the deep furrows in- 
tended to be the base of the cotton beds, and which 

224 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

with the use of plaister, amply repays both the labor 
and the cost. 

"I will add a httle on the subject of manure. We 
frequently hear much surprise expressed at the quan- 
tity of manure that is used by particular individuals; 
indeed there are but a very few, if any planters, who 
have not at some time or other, complained of the 
scarcity and difficulty of procuring it. Later expe- 
rience and more attention induce me to say, there is 
nothing in the southern country more abundant; at 
least the materials with which to make it; nor can we 
ever be in want of them, until black-jack leaves and 
pine straw become scarce. In truth every man who 
shall use the means within his power, will find the 
supply limited by his ability to collect and apply it. 
Generally when we have carried into the field the 
droppings of our cattle on our cowpens, and of our 
horses in the stable, we laud ourselves for the improve- 
ment we have made in good husbandry; and in fact, 
this is gaining much, for since my recollection, neither 
was thought of — the first having served only to make a 
turnip patch and the last remained a constant annoy- 
ance throughout the year. Now from these alone we 
may elaborate as much good manure as we can haul 
into the fields in season for planting. In making this 
kind of manure, it is only necessary to be wiUing to 
collect from the woods, leaves of any kind, pine straw 
as good as the best, and place them in our cowpens and 
stables, to find the quantity of excellent manure in- 
creasing beyond our expectation. If top soil of any 
kind be scattered among them, so much the better. 
This may be had from the corners of fences, sides of the 
roads, ponds occasionally dry, and such parts of the 

225 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

plantation as from situation will never be cultivated. 
There are but a very few planters, to whom any one of 
these sources of supply would not be abundant; no one 
can exhaust all of them, convenient to him. I might 
add weeds : can any one apprehend a scarcity of these? 
And pond grass; which last winter, with plaister, I 
have found admirable for sweet potatoes, in very poor 
land. Should care be taken to carry out into fields of 
light sandy soil, that which has been collected where 
clay abounded, and vice versa, so much the better; 
with or without such care, he who will try it, will find 
his time and labor repaid with usurious interest. It is 
not for planters to complain for the want of manure, 
until they have proved how excellent are even the 
carcasses of their dead beasts, the very bones of which 
are valuable. Instead of letting them rot on the sur- 
face, alike disgraceful to our care and dangerous to our 
health, if we will not make the best use of them by 
compounding them with six times their bulk of top 
soil — at least bury them in the field, where they will 
distinguish the place by superior fertility for many 
years. 

"If any man living in a poor sandy soil, will fill a 
single furrow across one of the plats in his garden, with 
black-jack leaves, taken from the woods, even in a 
windy day in March, bed on them, and plant a row of 
peas, he will require no further encouragement to make 
a longer experiment; fortunately every additional act 
to increase their fertility, by littering with them or by 
mixing them with dung, will be rewarded with addi- 
tional returns. By a process analagous to the above, I 
make every year, an excellent compost, by substituting 
cotton seed, for animal dung. Beds, rather mounds, 

226 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

with alternate layers of cotton seed, top soil and leaves of 
every kind, or pine straw (are made) in the fields, imme- 
diately while the ginning of the cotton is going on, in such 
number and places as the size of the field may require; the 
whole covered up with the soil nearest to the mound, and 
patted close with the spade; I have found, on opening 
them in the spring, to be used for cotton or corn, rich 
manure. This mode of using the cotton seed, is eco- 
nomical labor; advantageous, by distributing it through- 
out the field to be manured, at a period most suitable 
and convenient; and very abundant in quantity. I 
think one wagon load of cotton seed thus disposed of 
is as valuable as ten in the usual way. The entire 
evaporation of the oily and the other matter of the seed 
is prevented from escaping during the process of fer- 
mentation, and arrested and retained by the top soil 
and leaves. I have used each of the component parts 
of the compost separately, and so completely was the 
fertiUzing quality distributed I could discover no dif- 
ference in their effects. While the mounds are kept 
well covered, and properly patted with the spade, so en- 
tirely is the evaporation prevented, there is no smell 
perceived near them; every cotton planter knows how 
offensive large bulk of rotting cotton seed becomes, 
exposed to sun and rain. Additional supplies of manure 
are to be had from feeding our cattle in pens. Colonel 
Taylor (of Virginia) has shown in his Arator, how much 
may be done in this way with dry corn stalks alone. 
I have derived as much benefit from keeping my cattle 
out of my fields, by his system of feeding them in pens 
as from the large quantity of manure made in them. 
But these processes require labor to collect the material 
and labor to distribute the manure, and that which is 

227 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

more difficult to regulate, time also. When I have 
done all that my labor and time will admit of in these 
ways, I complete the course of manuring. I sow such 
parts of my lands, each year, in oats that I have not 
been able to manure otherwise. From these I collect 
only seed enough for the ensuing year, and plough in 
the rest, having first plaistered it. The seed is gathered 
by stripping it with the hand, from the stems, standing 
in the fields. I think this is the easiest and most ex- 
peditious method of saving oats seed, I have seen 
tried. The oats straw is best turned under by attach- 
ing a skim-coulter, or iron bolt, to the beam of the 
plough, with the outer end turned down; this should 
project from the beam horizontally a little forward of 
and beyond the mould board. Oats sown for manure, 
or indeed for any other purpose, need no other labor 
than simply sowing; this being done in the cotton field 
immediately before the hands begin to pick cotton; or 
in the corn field before it is gathered, will come up very 
well. It is only necessary to sow them before either 
operation is commenced to have them rise well. . . . 
For the encouragement of those who are willing to make 
some additional efforts, allow me to add, by means of 
the above hinted at, I have converted considerable 
portions of my fields, which were literally exhausted, 
into as productive soil as any I now cultivate — and this 
has been accompHshed since 1808, by D. R. Williams." 
6-20-1825. 

His method of curing hay was given in 1828: 
"When the first peas are nearly grown, or when the 
vine is in its highest verdure, set up your stack poles, 
made of any description of small trees, which has numer- 
ous branches. Cut these off three feet from the body. 

228 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Cut or pull the peas and immediately stack them, in 
the ordinary mode, only do not endeavor, as in stacking 
dry forage, to press as much as possible into a stack — 
the branches which project three feet from the body of 
the stack pole, admit air enough to prevent the vines 
from moulding. When cured, remove them to a house, 
or restack. The advantage will be found in the quality 
of the hay, and preservation of the leaves. More long 
forage may be made to the acre, in this mode, than from 
the same quantity of land in any other, and paradoxical 
as it may at first seem, the hay will cure better than 
when exposed to the sun. Better fodder was never 
offered to a mule or ox or milch cow." 

Editor T. D. Legare of the Southern Agriculturist 
made extended criticisms on the method. He pro- 
nounced it wasteful to turn horses and mules into ripe 
grain and condemned his mode of gathering oat seed. 
The first of April was too early to plant and the prac- 
tice of not covering the seed and of cutting roots was 
all wrong. The rotation of cotton, corn and grain was 
especially displeasing to the editor to whose criticism 
we are indebted for a fuller exposition of General 
Williams' methods: 

"The system I pursued up to 1825 is the same. I 
still follow the 'enclosing system,' as it is sometimes 
designated, and with which 'further experiment has 
satisfied me yet more.' I allow no foot to tread the 
fields appropriated for cultivation, that from the nature 
of the soil is susceptible to injury from treading, except 
those employed to work them and again add, 'I have 
derived as much benefit from keeping my cattle out of 
my fields ... as from the large quantities of 
manure made in the pens.' 

229 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

"You have mistaken an incident of that system for 
the system itself; that incident is the use to which I ap- 
ply 'certain portions of lands to be sowed either with rye 
or oats in the fall and to be fed down after the grain is 
ripe.' These portions of land are additional to those 
used for the crop. I consider that I was answering 
your wishes by stating my practice simply, without en- 
larging on supposed advantages, or attempting to dis- 
cuss the various opinions that had or might arise con- 
cerning them, presuming that if any good was to result, 
it would be from inducing others to test them. Con- 
cerning this particular incident which I recommended 
for trial, by all who have open land enough for the 
proof, permit me to add, to every planter whose system 
of cultivation is compounded of plough and hoe a pas- 
ture of some kind or other is indispensable. How is 
this position to be made most advantageously? That 
which has proved most beneficial, as well as economical 
to us, is that which I have suggested ; but it was recom- 
mended as a pasture, not as a system for fertilizing old 
worn out lands, and in exclusion of that system which I 
have long followed and still approve. If to have your 
butter of the color of gold in winter and enough of it 
too, instead of that which is always of a pale whitish 
hue, when the cows are fed wholly with dry food; if 
an abundance of milk be desirable; if fat calves are 
wanted, instead of the poor, lean, long-haired little 
creatures, that have been * knocked in the head with the 
churn stick'; if rich grazing in the depth of winter be 
sought, for colts and brood mares, you have only to 
sow with rye or oats a sufficient quantity of land in the 
fall, the earher the better, to obtain these; until the 
first of March or even the middle, when the soil is rich, 

230 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

at which time, the uses here suggested, will have paid 
you many times told, for the expense of producing 
them. 

"When the grain shall have become ripe, your work 
horses and mules will fatten by giving them access to 
it, without any other food than that which is always 
given at noon. When the grain has thus been appar- 
ently consumed, your hogs, turned in, will increase and 
multiply and fatten to tenfold the value of the seed 
and labor you have expended; and what is not less sat- 
isfactory, these portions of land thus treated will after 
three years produce more than they could before you 
derived all these advantages from them. 

"On the subject of saving oats seed, by stripping it 
with the hand from the stem in the field, I have but 
little to say. It is evident from your comments that is 
too great a novelty for your belief. I have not said it is 
the most expeditious mode that can be devised; but to 
those who may be disposed to try, I will add, that with a 
convenient sized basket, suspended from the shoulders, 
in front of the laborer, he can thus gather more oat 
seed, in my opinion, in the same time, than he possibly 
can by any of the ordinary modes now in practice. 

"With respect to improvement of the staple of cotton 
by thinning, I reply that any species of small grain is 
accelerated to maturing by thick sowing. This law of 
nature embraces cotton also. The grain of the first is 
small and diminutive; so also is the pod and wool of the 
last. Upland cotton being used by the manufacturer 
exclusively for the coarser fabrics, I am not aware that 
any attention is paid by the purchaser to its fineness. 
Color, strength and length of staple are the chief cir- 
cumstances that constitute its value. These are in- 

231 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

duced in the greatest degree by giving free access to sun 
and air, while the plant is growing. That which is not 
thinned at all, on rich soil, sowed as thick in the drill as 
oats or wheat, will mature first and has produced as 
often as I have made trials by weighing as much as that 
which was thinned in the ordinary mode; but the size of 
the pods and length of the staple are so obviously smaller 
and shorter as not to be doubted by the most superficial 
observer." 

General Williams might be paralleled and contrasted 
with the farmer-statesman of Rome, Marcus Porcius 
Cato; the latter, narrow in his views of politics and mor- 
als, invested his growing capital in so many ways that 
he declared that not even the gods could deprive him of 
all of it; the former, broad in his sympathies and char- 
itable toward all, invested everything in his visible es- 
tate and the appurtenances thereof; his defense was not 
a shrewd preparation against the worst that might be- 
fall him, but a conformity to the laws which lead to 
competency and independence. Although his losses at 
times were heavy he could always, like the model wife 
in the last chapter of Proverbs, smile at the days to 
come. In 1812 his loss by fire amounted to five 
thousand bushels of corn and thirty-five bales of cotton. 
In 1829 the great freshet caused a greater loss, and all 
through the years, the aggregate loss from going secur- 
ity for his hard-pressed neighbors is thought to have 
been the greatest. In spite, however, of these serious 
backsets and annoyances, he bravely faced the casual- 
ties of life and met, unsoured, every emergency. Dur- 
ing the freshet he walked along the levees to see the 
danger points with his own eyes; and with the same 
watchfulness he examined the leaks in his pocketbook. 

232 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

It required, for instance, several mules every year to keep 
up the efficiency of his teams, but he did not raise cot- 
ton to exchange for animals brought in from other 
states. He made provision to raise them at home on 
his own fine grazing lands at a nominal cost, and for an 
encouragement for his neighbors to do likewise. "I 
have," said he in 1830, "young mules and colts enough 
to hinder me from buying a western horse and mule 
for years." Had he transferred his corncribs and 
smokehouses and colt-raising to other states, he would 
have forfeited the right to be held up as an exemplar 
to later agriculturists. Had his example been sedu- 
lously followed everywhere, South Carohna would now 
be one of the wealthiest states in the Union. In the 
first quarter of the last century, bacon, corn and prov- 
ender went down the Pee Dee and the streams through 
the Santee Canal to Charleston; in the second, these 
articles came into Charleston and went up the water 
courses to the towns and plantations; but many a 
farmer, "unknown to fortune and to fame," became 
independent financially, by practising the same princi- 
ples of household economy, making everything needed, 
produced by the seasons, with cotton nearly clear 
money. One would suppose that General Wilhams 
spent all his time in supervising his varied and exten- 
sive interests; but such was not the case. As he turned 
aside occasionally from the serious side of life, to social 
enjoyments, so he sometimes laid aside the oversight of 
things and took up an implement or tool into his own 
hands. Near the close of his hfe when voices in 
Charleston, Edgefield, Camden and other places were 
calling him to come forward and seize a second time 
the helm of the state when she was in dangerous waters, 

233 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

he saw one of his gins idle for want of cogs; and because 
he hated to see it idle more than he did to labor with his 
own hands, he began the needed repairs. He went 
home from his work "dragging his hind legs like a worn 
down dray horse," and found there a letter proposing 
to put him in the chair of state. In 1814 he was made 
Governor on the basis of his reputation by men who had 
some doubts about the wisdom of the choice; in 1830 
the call proceeded from men who knew him thoroughly. 
Of him as Governor, a portrait hangs suspended in the 
library of the South Carolina University; of him as a 
farmer-statesman, one month before his death, the pic- 
ture is idyUic with its rustic setting. As paterfamilias, 
he dons his overalls and dignifies labor, by the side of 
his colored carpenters or paid journeymen, until he goes 
home in full sympathy with every toiler in the state 
who welcomes the hour of rest. The scene changes, 
and he appears as a farmer-statesman, a noble Roman, 
to whom the eyes of the people are turned, with the 
question, "Will you not lay hold and see to it that the 
Commonwealth receives no detriment? " 



234 



CHAPTER XXI 

UNABATED INTEREST IN HIS COUNTRY'S WELFARE 

GENERAL WILLIAMS retired to his plantation 
and to the bosom of his family, at the close of 
1816, fully satisfied with the honors bestowed 
upon him by the government and the people. He prob- 
ably did not know at the time how near he was to be- 
ing drawn out for another eight years' public service. 
President Monroe had invited W. H. Crawford to be a 
member of his Cabinet and having failed to secure a 
Western man to act as Secretary of War, in deference to 
President Madison, he offered the honor to William 
Lowndes. The latter declined and left the President 
free to choose between two men, who were in every way 
qualified for the office, General WiUiams and John C. 
Calhoun. In the previous year Calhoun had gone to 
the democratic caucus and by active exertions helped 
to nominate Monroe over Crawford. W. H. Crawford 
and John C. Calhoun had been at school together and, 
as it not unfrequently happens with schoolmates, be- 
came rivals and irreconcilable opponents. Crawford 
preferred Williams to Calhoun as a colleague, because 
of their intimate friendship, similarity of views and the 
General's military experience; but he expressed himself 
as pleased with the choice made by the President. 
At the time his official life was about to close, there 

235 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

was a vacancy in the United States Senate to be filled; 
but General Williams was not swayed by the ex- 
governor's ambition to go up higher. He preferred 
private life and exemplified William Lowndes' golden 
rule, not yet formulated, in neither seeking an honor 
nor rejecting it when offered by the people, however 
inconvenient it might be. 

The first year's efforts to return to a peace footing 
were less attractive to the public than the discussions 
about the tariff, internal improvements and slavery 
which proved in the end a veritable Satan, **who brought 
death into the world and all our woe." His fellow- 
citizens in South Carolina were more devoted to politics 
than the members of any denomination were to religion ; 
and among no people were there relatively more tal- 
ented and gifted individuals. Indeed the plethora of 
great men in the state, patriotic and ambitious, each 
striving to survive, gave a tragical air to the times. 
When it transpired in 1822 that Robert Y. Hayne had 
been elected in the place of Senator Smith, a states- 
rights Congressman, its full significance was compre- 
hended by General Williams. The passage of the tariff 
act in 1824, the election of Calhoun to the Vice-Presi- 
dency and the defeat of Crawford, were potent reasons 
for his entrance into the State Senate in 1824, to whose 
humble part in those troubled days, together with the 
men and the circumstances which throw light upon it, 
our story must be restricted. 

Prior to his election to the Vice-Presidency, Calhoun 
received a letter from a Congressman in Virginia, 
Robert S. Garnett, asking for his opinion of that part 
of the Constitution which deals with "the line which 
separates the powers of the general and state govern- 

236 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

ments. " The question and its answer are significant at 
this juncture, and the latter shows what he had thought 
upon the subject regarded vital by many who hved in 
his state. His reply is found in his letters, a part of 
which only is reproduced: 

"If there is one portion of the Constitution which I 
most admire, it is the distribution of power between the 
States and the General Government. It is the only 
portion which is novel and pecuhar. This is our inven- 
tion and I consider it to be the greatest improvement 
which has been made in the science of government after 
the division of power into the legislative, executive and 
judicial. Without it free states, if limited to a small 
territory, must be crushed by the great monarchical 
powers, or exist only at their discretion; but if it ex- 
tended over a great surface, the concentration of power 
and patronage necessary for government would speedily 
end in terror. It is only by this admirable distribution 
that a great extent of territory, with a proportional 
population and power, can be reconciled with freedom, 
and consequently that safety and respectability be 
given to free states. As much then as I value freedom, 
in the same degree do I value state rights. But it is 
not only in the abstract that I admire the distribution of 
power between the general government and the states. 
I approve of the actual distribution of the two powers, 
which is made by our Constitution. Were it in my 
power, I would make no change." After discussing 
how the Constitution should be and should not be 
interrupted, he continued, "I have never uttered a 
sentence in any speech, report or word in conversation 
that could give offence to the most ardent defender of 
state rights. Feeling the profoundest respect for the 

237 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

States and believing their honor not to be greater than 
it ought to be, I have at least never spoken disrespect- 
fully of them, or endeavored to establish principles 
that would weaken them. ... I have gone through 
a short but active political Hfe, and in trying times, and 
if hostile to the rights of the States, some evidence must 
be found of it in my speeches and reports. " In refer- 
ence to the national bank and the system of internal 
improvements he states the facts clearly and acknowl- 
edges that he was walking in the footsteps of Jefferson, 
Madison and Monroe. In the seven previous years 
Calhoun had been in the majority party and his busi- 
ness and his thinking had to do with the duties of the 
general government, but a change had been going on in 
the sections that was about to isolate him at home and 
abroad. "The change in Massachusetts and Con- 
necticut from a defiant particularism and an uncompro- 
mising free trade policy, during the short years of 1815 
to 1830, to a position of nationahsm and emphatic 
protective program parallels exactly the change at the 
same time in South CaroHna from nationalism and a 
protective tariff to a strict states-rights and an unbend- 
ing free trade system." (W. E. Dodd.) The change 
in New England caused the change in South CaroUna 
and Calhoun, like General Lee, with slow and reluctant 
steps, became a defender of his state against aggression. 
But Calhoun, the General Lee in the intellectual period 
of the sectional struggle, was carried around on the 
circumference of the political wheel, into the very camp 
of Crawford, Smith, Taylor, Williams and of their 
powerful and compact party, to whom, owing to his 
past opposition to their leader and his friends, he was 
less acceptable than Clay, the father of the un-American 

238 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

system. The history of these years in which Calhoun 
was the central figure had a double aspect, one in con- 
nection with Congress and the states, the other with 
the state government and the people of South Carolina. 
General Williams, who figured mostly in the latter 
conflict, found Judge Smith in the State Senate, 1824- 
1826, and supported his resolutions regarding the right 
of a State Legislature to "watch over the proceedings 
of Congress and express their approbation or disappro- 
bation of the same and remonstrate against any action 
or legislation of Congress." A school boy in Green- 
ville, B. F. Perry, criticised this action of the legisla- 
ture: "The adoption of Judge Smith's resolutions was 
truly a presumptuous act. The inferior servants were 
dictating to their masters and attempting to control 
the proceedings of the superior ones." Not many 
years were to pass before both Williams and Perry were 
to be charged with abandoning their positions, the 
latter waxing warmer about the tariff iniquity, the 
former recoiling before the prospect of civil war and 
dissension. Senator Smith, however, looked back upon 
the resolutions as an eye-opener in respect to internal 
improvements, "which the favorites of South Carolina 
were cherishing both in and out of Congress." The 
legislature by a close vote reinstated Judge Smith as 
United States Senator in 1826 and General Williams 
voted for the resolutions declaring that Congress does 
not have power under the Constitution to adopt a 
general system of internal improvement and as a 
national measure, that it was an unconstitutional exer- 
cise of power on the part of Congress to lay duties to 
protect domestic manufactures and to tax the citizens 
of one state to make roads and canals for the benefit of 

239 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

the citizens of another." The state was represented 
in the United States Senate in 1827 by Hayne and 
Smith, with Calhoun as the presiding officer. The 
action of the legislature in electing Smith and in ap- 
proving his resolutions became a visible turning point 
in Calhoun's political poUcy, and it was in accord with 
his answer once to a friend who remarked, "You 
ought to be in Columbia looking after your reelection." 
"The legislators," he repHed, "are in Columbia to 
attend to their business, and I am here to attend to 
mine.'' It was during the spring session that as pre- 
siding officer his vote was decisive against the increased 
tariff on woolens. 

In July following David J. McCord used novel 
language before an anti-tariff meeting called to meet in 
Columbia: "Should it be necessary to raise a question 
between liberty and the Union, no man of spirit or 
sense could hesitate," and his words were almost for- 
gotten under the force of what Thomas Cooper, presi- 
dent of the South Carolina College, had to say: "We 
shall ere long be compelled to calculate the value of 
our Union, and to inquire of what use to us, is this 
most unequal alliance, by which the North has been 
always the gainer and the South always the loser. Is 
it worth while to continue this Union of States, in 
which the North demands to be our masters and we 
are required to be their tributaries, who with insulting 
mockery, call the yoke they put on our necks the Ameri- 
can system. The question, however, is fast approach- 
ing to the alternative of submission or separation." 
An editor in Greenville unhesitatingly declared that 
"we would be glad to see the first traitor who should 
propose a dissolution of the union, sacrificed to honest 

240 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

indignation and hung without judge or jury"; but 
Calhoun in a letter to James Edward Calhoun evidently 
with more caution and prudence alluded to the recent 
meeting in Columbia and other anti-tarifT gatherings: 
"The South has commenced with remonstrating against 
this unjust and oppressive attempt to sacrifice their 
interest; and I do trust, that they will not be provoked 
to step beyond strict constitutional remedies." And 
it may be added that in this same year he had com- 
menced in earnest to devise the constitutional remedy 
which he hoped would check a rapacious majority on 
the one side and the centrifugal tendency, shown so 
manifestly in the Columbia meeting, on the other. 

The youthful statesman, Perry, regarded the political 
situation as most serious in the history of the country; 
and Calhoun declared that "few men realized the mag- 
nitude of the present juncture; and that it could not 
pass away without testing severely the character of 
those who are prominently before the nation." He had 
already, in the early part of the year, been under the 
charge of sharing in the profits of government contracts 
and after a scrutiny of forty days by a committee, a 
majority of whom he called his "enemies," he was honor- 
ably acquitted. He attributed the verdict to a life of 
spotless purity, but he was not infallible in supposing 
such a characteristic a shield against slander. Some 
forty years after the acquittal Jefferson Davis, being 
a prisoner in Fortress Monroe and in his weakness per- 
mitted to walk outside with General Nelson A. Miles 
and Dr. Craven, talked with Miles about the fortifi- 
cations known as Rip Raps, until Miles in an interroga- 
tive tone repeated the slander that "Calhoun had 
made much money by speculations or favoring the 

241 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

speculations of his friends connected with this work.*' 
*'In a moment," said Dr. Craven, "Davis started to his 
feet, betraying much indignation by his excited manner 
and flushed cheek. It was a transfiguration of friendly 
emotion, the feeble and wasted invalid and prisoner 
suddenly forgetting his bonds, forgetting his debility, 
and ablaze with eloquent anger against this injustice 
to the memory of one whom he loved and reverenced. 
Mr. Calhoun, he said, lived a whole atmosphere above 
any sordid or dishonorable thought — was of a nature to 
which a mean act was impossible." Another test that 
wounded him in the tenderest point was the charge of 
ingratitude to Crawford by two Georgia papers; but a 
more serious matter was the effort of Crawford and his 
friends to side-track him by the nomination of Nathan- 
iel Macon for the Vice-Presidency. Preceding and 
connected with it was the tour of Martin Van Buren 
and Churchill Cambreling, of New York, after the close 
of the spring session, 1827, through Virginia down to 
Georgia, to the home of W. H. Crawford, Presidential 
candidate, defeated in 1816 and 1824. Their mission 
was to bring about an alliance between the Crawford 
and Jackson forces, with a view to the campaign in 
1828; but that did not exhaust the motives for the 
journey. Mr. Crawford was an avowed enemy to the 
man whom Van Buren had most to dread as a successor 
to President Jackson, in the event of his election; and 
from Crawford some things could be learned which, at 
the right time, might be of great service. Crawford 
and his friends in South Carolina thought Calhoun 
should not be Jackson's running mate. Crawford 
could not forget how Calhoun had opposed and thwarted 
his Presidential aspirations, and Smith knew what 

242 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

turned the scales against him as United States Senator. 
They were in no mood to elevate by their votes their 
arch-enemy, by putting him on Jackson's ticket. But 
Van Buren was too wise or too weak to carry out the 
wishes of his Southern friends. He was for unifying all 
parties at present in order that Jackson's election might 
be made certain, as is seen in a letter from Crawford to 
Van Buren: 

''Wood Lawn, 21s/ Dec. 1827. 
''HorCble Martin Van Buren, 

"Sir: . . . Since you left Gen. Wilhams' last 
spring, I received a letter from him thanking me for 
my supposed influence in securing him the pleasure of 
a visit from you. In that letter, he expressed (himself) 
much pleased with the visit. But he expressed regret 
that you appeared to him disposed to let Calhoun 
remain in his present situation ; whereas he thought Mr. 
Calhoun ought to be punished for the mischief he had 
done. He further informed me that he said as much 
as (he) could to change your opinion. About the same 
time Governor Taylor informed (me) that Jackson 
ought to know and, if he does not he shall know, that 
at the Calhoun caucus in Columbia, the epithet 'Mili- 
tary Chieftain' was bandied about more flippantly than 
it has been since by the partisans of H. Clay, and by 
none more than by the family friends of Mr. Calhoun. 
That gentleman is now down in his State and his degra- 
dation is no where desired (more) than by the leading 
men in South Carolina. 

"I think therefore it is extremely desirable that a 
candidate for the Vice-Presidency should be started 
against Mr. C. during the present Congress. If he 

243 



THE LIFE .\ND LEGACY OF 

should be defeated there will be little danger that he 
will be taken up by Jackson. On the other hand, the 
frail health of the latter gentleman makes it very 
desirable that the Vice-President should be a man 
worthy of the highest trust. I would respectfully 
suggest the name of Nathaniel Macon for that office. 
The friends of the administration would doubtless pre- 
fer him or any other to Mr. C. And New York, Vir- 
ginia, North Carolina and Georgia would, I should 
think, vote for any man against him, the three latter 
states I am sure of. You know better than I about 
the first. 

"Yours respectfully, 
"W. H. Crawford." 

The current in favor of Calhoun was stronger than 
the opposition. Several Northern legislatures nomi- 
nated him and Virginia, whose votes he always prized 
high, was in his favor. The mischief for which General 
Williams wanted him punished was connected with the 
tarilT, internal improvements and the national bank. 
His opposition to Calhoun was not embittered by any 
personal animosity and the only punishment he ever 
wished to mete out to his erring fellow-citizens was 
retirement to private life where they might be free to 
work out their own salvation. Benton, John Quincy 
Adams, Crawford and Smith had no ordinary aversion 
to Calhoun, but Williams was judicial even when de- 
feated and frankly admitted that the Calhoun party 
was directed by superior statesmanship. The year 
1828 was notable for the passage of the "bill of abomina- 
tions" and the presentation of "the Exposition" to the 
legislature. After the passage of the tariff bill, the 

244 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

South Carolina delegation, excepting Senator Smith, 
met to discuss the propriety of leaving their seats and 
going home, but the project was defeated by the oppo- 
sition of Colonel Drayton. Governor Perry uses Con- 
gressman Mitchell as authority for the statement. It 
is also substantiated by General Williams' letters and 
most of all by the Charleston papers which have in 
them a long discussion, begun by Hayne's answer to a 
direct question put to him by an editor in Georgetown. 
Some of the delegation addressed their constituents in 
wrought-up language on the injustice of the tariff. 
McDufTie, who was thought by many to be second not 
even to Demosthenes in impassioned eloquence, was the 
natural leader in the crusade. Meetings were held all 
over the state to stir up the people. (Perry.) It was in 
connection with this general awakening on the subject 
that five men at Union were appointed to address 
General Williams and seek his advice. The pertinent 
part of the letter only can be given : 

"We respectfully ask to be informed by you of the 
state of public feeling and pubhc opinion in your section 
of the State in relation to the passage of the tariff and 
whether the people seem determined to oppose the 
operation of the law, and if so, what mode of opposition 
will in your opinion best comport with their views and 
feelings. We further beg you to communicate to us, 
your opinions and views as to the policy which under 
existing circumstances, may be most effective and 
speedy, in producing the discomfiture and defeat what 
is termed the protective policy. Give us your advice 
on this matter of delicate and difficult import. " 

The reply, by request, was made immediately. It 

245 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

is one of the most important of all his communications 
and was intended to be pacific in its results. Except- 
ing his pertinent and elegant preface and brief conclu- 
sion the full text is given: 

"The state of public feeling in this part of the State 
is extremely angry and indignant: and the public 
opinion is that the system which has excited the anger 
and indignation is founded on injustice, being in its 
very nature extortion from the many for the benefit of 
the few only; it is moreover wholly and grossly in vio- 
lation of the Constitution of the United States. I have 
not a doubt that this is the opinion of 99-100 of the 
citizens of this Congressional District. It is not so easy 
to say what proportion, if any of them, are determined 
to oppose operation of the law. I fear we have some 
young and gallant spirits, who, impatient of wrongs, are 
willing to risk their hves, if not their necks, in a military 
career, if only for the fun of it ; but of the discreet, sober 
minded or aged, I have not met one, who will counte- 
nance any other 'opposition' than such as I will here- 
after describe. We have had since the adjournment of 
Congress no public meetings on the subject and doubt 
if there will be any, at least in this immediate neigh- 
bor hood. Almost all the influential part of the com- 
munity are for moderating the excitement as much as 
possible. 

"As to my own opinions and views (allow me to 
declare I state them solely because you desire them), 
they are in perfect union with those of my fellow citi- 
zens, on the character of the laws complained of. I 
believe them to be unwise, unjust, unconstitutional. 
But at the same time, cannot hide from myself that 

246 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

there are other considerations, growing out of the sub- 
ject, that ought not to be disregarded. They were 
adopted after long deUberation, with all the forms and 
sanctions of legislative proceedings by a decided major- 
ity. That the majority ought to rule is a principle on 
which all our institutions are bottomed. It is just as 
much the duty of a minority to obey, as it is that a 
majority shall govern, according to the specific forms 
granted in the Constitution. Whether the powers dele- 
gated to Congress have been exercised properly, are 
questions to be decided by reason, not by force. A 
difference of opinion will arise on almost any subject; 
few indeed if any of them ought to be made questions 
for dissolving the Union; and after all to what can we 
appeal with so much propriety as to the sense of the 
majority. Let us suppose the worst, that the tariff 
laws are unconstitutional and that they will be persisted 
in by the majority who have passed them; are we not 
still bound to exercise our best reason, in deciding 
whether it is such a case that dismemberment of the 
Union alone can remedy; and if so, whether it shall be 
resorted to. Let us not deceive ourselves, this in fact 
is the end, and the only one, to which resistance by the 
legislature leads. Is it expedient to follow it? I think 
not. Is there a discreet citizen in Union District, can 
one be found in the State, who will prefer to take his 
musket and shoot down twenty-three Kentuckyans and 
Yankees (the destruction of life must be in this propor- 
tion or it will be against us) rather than make his vn 
coarse woolen cloths? For it would seem that the 
increased duties on hemp, iron, molasses and sugar 
excite but a small share of anger, our own representa- 
tives having voted for them. This may be a coarse 

247 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

way of stating the case, but strip it naked and it is a 
fair one. But a very important inquiry remains to be 
settled before we urge the legislature to resistance. 
Ought we not to be clearly satisfied that the legislature 
itself can remedy the evil? I believe the case does not 
warrant such an appeal, and what is still more, if at- 
tempted, will not better our situation. I therefore 
prefer to suffer, while suffering is tolerable, rather than 
encounter evils much more terrible. I have seen no 
project yet suggested that to my mind promises suc- 
cess, in any attempt to coerce Congress into our views. 
We are all convinced that the system of protection is 
unwise and injurious to the general interest. We have 
first discovered this truth not because we are wiser than 
the rest of the Union, but because it was first made to 
bear heavily on us. The last law on the subject is 
wider and of more general operation. Surely it is 
prudent to wait until there shall have been ample time 
to produce the same conviction among others equally 
interested with ourselves. At all events, I believe it 
better to confide yet longer in the generous truth that 
'error of opinion may be tolerated while reason is left 
free to combat it.' We were not sparing of our cen- 
sures when New England meditated resistance to the 
embargo. We believed Massachusetts recreant to vir- 
tue and love of country, when she withheld her militia 
during the war. There was not a man among us who 
did not pronounce the Hartford Convention a traitor- 
ous association; indisputably it becomes us to look well 
to it that we do not tread in the very footsteps which 
we have denounced with so much bitterness. Let us 
not forget that at the very time when New England 
thus acted, the administration of the general govern- 

248 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

ment, having exhausted its funds, had not wherewith 
to keep in the field the troops stationed on our seaboard 
for its defence. Of this dreadful truth Gen. Pinckney 
advised the then Governor of South Carolina — how 
did the legislature act? Did it embarrass Congress 
with reproaches or upbraid the Executive with the 
failure of its most important constitutional duties? No, 
it magnanimously advanced, without a dissenting voice, 
the estimated amount of internal taxes of the ensuing 
year, before even the law was passed imposing them. 
Who is there among us who is not in the present proud 
of this transaction, notwithstanding a portion of this 
very debt is meanly withheld and for which the legisla- 
ture has in vain petitioned. Deplorable indeed will be 
the act, which shall first subtract from the moral force 
and beauty of so bright an example. I have said I 
cannot see, should the legislature be driven to take the 
remedy into its own hands, how it can better our situa- 
tion. I take it for granted no one will contend that it 
will be bettering the case, to be at open war with the 
rest of the Union. If there be any body so deluded and 
frantic with passion as to think otherwise, to such one 
I do not appeal. Let us suppose the next step short of 
war, that we have withdrawn from the Union and that 
the general government will not resort to open war to 
prevent it, are there not other and ampler means by 
which it could enter into the unprofitable contest 'of 
who shall do the other the most harm,' making our own 
government to us, what that of every weak and feeble 
state has been to its citizens or subjects, a very curse. 
Suppose our delegation withdrawn from Congress, the 
custom houses taken into our hands and all our sea- 
ports declared free (my eyes have been nearly blistered 

249 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

by looking on such a project on paper). It appears to 
me that any man who is wicked enough to conceive 
such a project, must have wit enough to see how easy it 
would be for Congress to prevent every possible circum- 
stance, of supposed advantages, from accruing to us. 
These projects, weak as they are, furnish the most ef- 
fective resistance by the legislature. With infinite re- 
spect for the suggestor, I consider the attempt to tax 
domestic goods, as published in a speech in the Tele- 
scope, still weaker. Of success from such means of co- 
ercion, I utterly despair. That which you have sug- 
gested, as being most favorably entertained in your 
district, namely, associations for non-consumption of 
eastern and western articles, I think better of, only 
because it may keep the two governments. State and 
United States, from direct conflict. It will only array 
(bad enough God knows) section against section. Such 
a course if executed, would probably have a sensible 
effect, in opening the eyes of those who have had too 
much success in legislating a goodly portion of the prof- 
its of our labor to their own benefit. But it is to say 
the least, much to be apprehended that, resolutions for 
such objects would be badly executed, and if obeyed at 
all, would be for a sufficient time, only by the virtuous. 
I cannot therefore think favorably of any project, that 
shall lead directly or indirectly to dismember the Union ; 
or that may, without more time for conviction, render 
hostile any portion of that family, among which, union 
and harmony alone can give strength and prosperity. 
Dreadful must be the times and severe the sulTerings of 
our people, that shall warrant an appeal to the elements 
of passion and discord for relief. My advice therefore 
is, to abstain from every act that will add to the present 

250 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

excitement, confident that the good sense of the people 
at large will with moderation and justice on our part, 
remedy our evils, better or sooner than we can our- 
selves; most of all, I implore you, not to urge the legis- 
lature to entertain any discussion on the subject, what- 
ever. In addition to such a course of moderation and 
loyalty, I consider it perfectly consistent and moral 
that we should, with settled and persevering determina- 
tion to do everything individually that is legal, to take 
ourselves out of the operation of all the tariff laws, that 
have been or may be enacted. All that the legislature 
or voluntary associations can do, with any probability 
of success, may be better done and ought to be, by 
individuals. We have ample means to reach the inter- 
ests of the friends of the tariff, if we will but use them. 

"It has been ascertained that there are brought into 
this State, over the Saluda Mountain road, from the 
west, one and a half million worth of live stock an- 
nually. If we abstain from purchasing these, can it be 
doubted that the reaction will extend to every fireside 
west of the mountains. At least our old friends there, 
might be induced to remember (the delusion incident 
to the present contest being over) that they have de- 
serted us for new, not better friends, even for those who, 
to say the least, as uniformly opposed, as we have been 
friendly, to their admission into the family of states. 
Our influence on New England is of the same nature, 
but stronger, because, to a much larger amount. No 
people on earth have been so distinguished for shrewd- 
ness in discovering their own interest; and perhaps, 
never harder to drive from it; touch this and our cause 
is safe. 

"Let us then manufacture our own clothes, and be 

251 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

wise enough to wear them. Let us raise our own horses, 
mules, cattle and hogs; and if by these measures, we 
shall become more economical and industrious and 
thereby relieve ourselves from debt and embarrassment, 
we shall have ample reason to rejoice and wait with 
patience and good faith for the time when high duties 
on hemp, iron, sugar and molasses, and all the other 
evils of the policy of protection, shall convince the 
other portions of the Union that the true and inherent 
character of their system is a tax on the many for the 
benefit of the few and wealthy. This is the resistance 
I approve, will practice, to the utmost of my ability. 
It is a resistance, by which we can live and profit; which 
the laws warrant; which our consciences justify and 
which I believe, will soonest repeal the obnoxious laws 
of which we now so justly complain. 

"Most respectfully, your fellow-servant, 

"David R. Williams." 

The letter to the Union friends increased the fame 
but not the happiness of its author. It was copied in 
many papers, read widely and commented on in public 
and private with and without approbation. It created 
a sensation in which there was no approach to oneness of 
mind in the state, except in the dislike of the tariff. 
To some it reached the dignity of an inspired communi- 
cation, texts from which served as the peg on which 
anonymous writers expanded their own views for pub- 
lic consumption; but the editor of the Charleston 
Mercury and a swarm of anonymous critics, protested 
against and ridiculed the sentiments or the past conduct 
of General Williams. He was pronounced inconsistent 
with his record in the legislature, 1824-27, in regard to 

252 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

negro property, in voting for the state's right to regu- 
late it and in regard to his support in 1825 of Smith's 
resolutions, and in his not pouring oil on the troubled 
waters in 1827. One writer declared the government 
which cheated the state out of money lent to it in the 
War of 1812 ought not to be trusted again. "The 
little FederaUst editor of the Mercury" protested in 
strong terms to the doctrine that the tariff is unconsti- 
tutional but because it has been passed by a majority 
it must be submitted to. It was a slavish doctrine 
never to be embraced in this country. In comparison 
with the state, it made the majority in Congress om- 
nipotent. It was the essence of consolidation. Even 
Crawford had said the situation of the Southern States 
would justify open and armed resistance. In opposi- 
tion to this construction put by the Mercury on the 
statement of General Williams, the City Gazette was a 
better exegete in its declaration that General Williams 
never did intend to say that a law passed by a majority 
in Congress which is a direct violation of the Constitu- 
tion ought to be submitted to merely because a majority 
had enacted the law. He on the contrary intends to 
say that although 99-lOOths of his fellow-citizens be- 
lieve it to be unconstitutional, yet inasmuch as it has 
been passed according to the forms of the Constitution, 
and is a law of the land until it is repealed or declared 
unconstitutional, he would advise a withdrawal, for 
the present, as far as possible from the reach of the law 
rather than from the Union. The Telescope in Colum- 
bia, around which his party friends were gathered, 
surprised him with adverse editorial comments. His 
immediate reply was held back, for reasons given below, 
by his friends in Columbia, but he sent another broad- 

253 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

side to the Telescope, which will be drawn upon only 
in some detached sections. As to the abundant criti- 
cism passed on him, he said: 

"From the editor of the Telescope, who first made a 
powerful pass at my supposed principles, to the gentle- 
man who has indulged himself in a sneer at my character 
over the signature of a 'Citizen of Darlington,' all have 
evaded or wholly avoided the main point of inquiry, to 
exercise themselves in one uniform strain of increpation 
about my principles. At this I perhaps ought not to 
express surprise; older and better men have thus been 
used before; but I will say I feel deep regret that a 
disposition to this end has existed anywhere in the 
state, seeing the palpable object aimed at, was to unite 
my fellow-citizens to the observation of that modera- 
tion which becomes men and which is alone to be found 
within the bounds of reason. Instead of this a stranger, 
ignorant of the events, would naturally suspect that I 
must have been guilty of some heinous offence against 
public morals, or at least, been using in my devotions, 
the new litany of the Baltimore dinner, praying for 
war, pestilence and famine. To the gentlemen of the 
press who have combatted some of my opinions, but 
have allowed me to be fairly heard, I return my thanks. 
To those who have abused me, I have been told there 
are some, without sending me their publications, I 
must think they have for once omitted the practice of 
the sublime scriptural doctrine of doing as they would 
be done by. To those gentlemen from different parts 
of the state who have sent me their 'thanks,' their 'grati- 
tude,' I shall have said enough, when I add, that they 
have given me the blessed consolation of knowing that 
tried by my 'peers,' I need not dread their verdict." 

254 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

To the wily class whom he called "thoroughbred 
office hunters" and wished to be rid of or even to appease, 
he said, " I beg these gentlemen to believe that I stand 
in the way of not one in the whole fraternity. There 
is nothing in the gift of the legislature, nor of the 
people, which I seek or wish for. Both have already 
honored me beyond my seeking — infinitely beyond my 
consciousness of desert. I have declined a reelection 
(to the State Senate) — the place I lately occupied will 
be filled by an abler man. I have again cheerfully 
sunk into the mass of private citizens — am practically 
as dead as if I were with Pharaoh's host, at the bottom 
of the Red Sea. I hope I have disarmed these gentle- 
men; if not, I can only add, 'Strike if you will, but 
listen.'" 

He had spent long and dreary hours trying to find 
some scheme to get rid of the tariff by coercion, but he 
could find nothing that was not equally a violation of 
the Constitution as the tariff itself. The legislature 
has no power to coerce Congress. It may give cool 
and deliberate consideration, or do anything which 
properly relates to argument, "in good faith to our 
compound system of government, without infringing 
or infracting the rights of the Union; but the moment it 
departs from these, leaving the broad and legitimate 
field of argument, it commences that resistance, no 
matter how small or modified, which leads to disunion. 
To whom is it given to see the final result of any, the 
slightest conflict between the two governments, with 
our passions in a flame, and our injuries goading us to 
fury and madness, who is there to stop this awful surge 
that must land us in utter ruin and desolation? As 
well may you hope to obstruct Niagara with a pebble. '* 

255 



CHAPTER XXII 

UNABATED INTEREST IN HIS COUNTRY'S WELFARE 

(Continued) 

ON THE 14th of August (1828) General Wil- 
liams attended an anti-tariff meeting at 
Columbia and made an eloquent speech 
against following in the footsteps of the Hartford Con- 
vention. Professor Henry of the State College moved 
to strike out of the resolution that part containing the 
abstract doctrine of attachment to the Union, and was 
defeated by two votes. It furnished the occasion to 
the City Gazette to observe that Professor Henry's 
European education fitted him to be a fine adjunct to 
Dr. Cooper. The letter to the "Union folks" brought 
General WiUiams into trouble with his friends in Colum- 
bia, who were yet together as undeveloped germs in 
the parent bulb, to be separated as the political contest 
waxed warm. Judge Withers was the editor of the 
Telescope and the author of the critical comments upon 
the Union letter. Being misinformed as to the real 
author. General Williams wrote "a warm and lengthy 
reply"* which was judiciously held back by the Tele- 
scope and looked forward to as "a great pubHc benefit" 
by the City Gazette. He, it is inferred from his guarded 
language, was hitting at Dr. Cooper, Professor Henry 

*Quoted in part at the close of Chapter XXI. 

256 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

'*and other fine writers and men of science and literature 
in Columbia, who give tone and character to much of the 
reputation of the state in the walks of literature and 
belles lettres; but the blow was supposed to be aimed 
especially at W. C. Preston and D. J. McCord and the 
allusion to the wrongheaded construction upon his 
letter could mean only Judge Withers. The letter 
was finally suppressed and peace restored, in which 
General Williams was left the only 'wounded pigeon.' 
The ridicule of his friend Withers, however, 'cost' him 
all the philosophy he could master to submit to it, but 
he did and in silence, and was glad that he had enough 
to suppress the resentment he at the moment was 
oppressed with." His friend. Senator Smith, also 
could not agree with him in some of the positions taken 
in the letter. Smith, like Wilhams, inhaled an anti- 
tariff atmosphere with his first political breath, and in 
1830 claimed that he had saved more than ten million 
dollars and had been instrumental in saving from sacri- 
fice many thousands of acres of land (in 1828). His 
development was logically in the direction of a seces- 
sionist, but if he ever was in danger of reaching that goal 
a certain "monster in politics" diverted his course. 
A more interesting friendly difference appeared and 
grew greater between him and Stephen D. Miller. 
Miller was a candidate to succeed Governor Taylor and 
was more sensitive to public opinion. He was recog- 
nized as being an opponent to the nullifiers, but he de- 
cidedly repudiated the remarks about our institutions 
being bottomed on majority rule, taking a translation 
and not the surface meaning of General Wilhams, who 
had never dreamed of putting "a majority in Congress" 
as a substitute for the Constitution. Being an inter- 

257 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

ested on-looker only and not a candidate, and not 
wishing to jeopardize the election of his friends, he 
became silent in their behalf. "I verily beheve, " said 
he, when he perceived the unexpected impression, 
"there is no way left but to chain me up by a short 
tether. I have broke into the public print under the 
most solemn fears. I will hasten to break out of them; 
for it would seem, if I succeed in my object to quiet the 
public excitement, I am likely to excite my friends 
against myself; or at least give them much trouble." 
He was active in his interest in the issue of the campaign 
and was delighted by the election of Miller and equally 
chagrined at the defeat of Evans. After sufficient 
time to diagnose the situation, he wrote to Governor 
Miller: "Able as I have always considered Mr. Calhoun 
and his friends at political management, I consider them 
now much more so from the issue of this, as well as some 
other recent transactions. I do not in the least doubt 
they prevented Major Hamilton from opposing you, 
and altho the issue so far as this single election was 
concerned would have been precisely the same, I be- 
lieve every other would have been very different. Upon 
all others save one, I felt no deep interest, while the 
result of that one cuts me to the very quick. In Evans' 
defeat I feel not only that the radical party are de- 
feated, but that, as a party, are humbled and therefore 
disgraced. Whenever I have thus spoken, and it has 
always been when I spoke at all, I have been told I 
ought to take a full share of it to myself. Of this I am 
unconscious, but it adds nothing to my comfort that 
any friend I had should think so. This state of things 
opens to my mind a most gloomy prospect of the future, 
so far as the doings of the legislature may be affected. 

258 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Without doubt the Calhounists saw distinctly the state 
of things that would probably arise, consequent upon 
your removal from the legislature; and it is to their 
foresight this statesmanlike look into consequences that 
induced them to hold back Hamilton; and by no means 
to any favorable impression toward you. You had 
quite too often assailed their principles and routed 
their hosts, for them not to cease (seize) on any oppor- 
tunity that should take you out of the array against 
them. The prospect before us is to me most gloomy. 
In the Senate we are a thousand degrees below zero — 
and in the House so utterly powerless for want of that 
conceit incident to united wills, led by a master spirit, 
that, I fear we shall receed much further from the true 
principles and able practice, than did the old republi- 
cans from the days of Mr. Jefferson's ascendancy. All 
I can say or do is, good Lord deliver us!" 

Governor Perry judged that the nullifiers' final vic- 
tory was due to the so-called Jacobin clubs formed late 
in 1830 in order to have concert of action throughout 
the state, raise money, publish campaign documents 
and distribute them amongst the people. General Wil- 
liams, the one prominent man out of and not seeking 
office, saw a different cause for his party's failure — 
inferior generalship. Hamilton, for one example, or- 
ganized the clubs in 1830 and two years later the 
Unionists formed "Washington Societies" after they 
had become a minority. With Calhoun, Hamilton, 
McDuffie and Hayne on the other side, General Wil- 
hams' order of battle might have failed, but it was the 
only one that had any chance of success. He believed 
that the question of union was the real issue. He was 
for urging on the people the machinations of the agita- 

259 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

tors and pushing the subject rather than waiting "for 
further developments of the motives of the actors," as 
Miller recommended. The Union party was of the 
orthodox species in which it is the law of preservation 
to challenge the reformer or innovator on the thresh- 
old. The voice of established authority is always 
heard with respect and it influences the public mind at 
once. The game cock does not wait for the motives of 
an intruder into his harem to be developed ; and General 
Williams expressed a parallel feeling in his human breast 
in saying: "When I see my enemy in force, my first 
impulse is to attack. It is but a very short space before 
the battle must be fought." In the latter part of the 
same month he said to Candidate Miller: "I know you 
will forgive me when I say I am perfectly convinced 
that your first impressions were much more correct, 
namely, to put your election and our party on the broad 
question of union rather than keep open the question. 
. . . The Legislature cannot avoid the question of 
union and therefore it would have been better for the 
radicals to assume it, thereby giving impulse and in- 
fluence, where they must ultimately receive it." 

General Williams, as he looked out from his eyrie in 
the Pee Dee upon the troubled state, was still preferring 
the tariff to civil war and practising his method of oppo- 
sition to the tariff: "I shall make within the year more 
than 20,000 yards of coarse cotton and woolen goods- 
have killed upwards of 500 head of hogs of my own 
raising and have young mules and colts enough to 
hinder me from buying a western horse or mule for 
years." In this off year in politics, he suffered a great 
loss by the Pee Dee floods, pushed his factory work and 
began his cotton seed oil factory. As the year passed 

260 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

on, the condition of the radical party in South Carolina 
cleared up somewhat and he determined to carry the 
war into Africa. Accordingly he penned a letter to 
Martin Van Buren, Jackson's Secretary of State, which 
shows incidentally Jackson's negligence in using his 
legitimate power to help the Union party against a 
common adversary; and it gives a glimpse of much 
that otherwise would have been lost. It was marked 
"confidential" and is preserved in the archives at 
Washington : 

[Confidential] ''Society Hill, \lth Nov. 1829. 

'*My dear Sir: . . . Your visit through this 
State convinced you that, however ardent Mr. Cal- 
houn's few friends were, in his service, they were only 
few in number, tho' able and active — ^You must equally 
have been satisfied that, his political adversaries were 
such on principle. If there has been any change among 
the citizens here, it is rather adverse to Mr. C's pro- 
motion, as the great turmoil and excitement amongst us 
are, I presume, calculated to make you so beUeve. Mr. 
C. holds and probably no one will question the correct- 
ness of his opinion, that no man can be influential at 
Washington who does not stand high at home. The 
converse of this opinion is probably equally well- 
founded. To those who do not know the reason why, 
it always appears that Mr. Crawford was either wholly 
ignorant of this state of things in South Carolina or 
despaired of altering it. You know the truth to be, 
he had no means to effect such, there being then an in- 
fluence in the throne and behind it which paralized his 
power. The party opposed to Mr. Calhoun, believe no 
such facts exist now. We ask ourselves why it is that 

261 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

we have never been recognized at Washington and there 
are none to answer. We therefore infer that South 
Carohna is completely surrendered by those who should 
be in alliance with us, as wholly hopeless. Without a 
question, state pride and the many motives you will 
understand, are in Mr. G's favor, and that to shake and 
supercede them will be difficult, nay impossible, if 
things are suffered to progress as they now exist, touch- 
ing his misapprehended influence and an imbecility. 
Difficult as may be the task, to take from him the vote 
of South Carohna, it is not impossible, provided there 
shall be effected a demonstration at Washington, not 
only at war with his views but indicative of recognition 
and confidence in his opponents here. To be left alone 
in the conflict, to fight against our own kin and house- 
hold, will be as it was before to roll the stone uphill to 
be crushed by its recoil; but if you will give us a 'scuf- 
fing stick' to prop our efforts, I verily believe we can 
get the waggon to the top of the hill. But suppose I am 
mistaken, that we cannot deprive Mr. C. of that vote, 
is it not obvious he stands stronger abroad from the 
confession of that strength, than he would do, if any- 
thing should arise to start even a doubt among other 
states that here he is not supreme. To me this appears 
clear and worth the effort. Fortunately existing cir- 
cumstances are very favorable to make the effort with 
the chance of success, and to risk nothing. On the part 
of the administration who appointed them, never was 
a greater faux pas than making Middleton and Poinsett 
foreign ministers, to say nothing of their abilities, that 
is wholly immaterial. I allude to the acquisition of 
strength by the appointing power. The former is 
probably without a private or public friend and the 

262 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

latter is scarcely less influential. So also of Mr. Dis- 
trict Attorney and others. He was a federalist of the 
most obnoxious stamp whose appointment soured every 
body, but federalists and Mr. C's friends. The ap- 
pointment of such men was the clearest demonstration 
of what was Mr. C's standing at Washington; their 
removal can scarcely fail of equally clear proof of de- 
cayed power, if their places be filled with his opponents. 
Send Judge Smith to Petersburgh, his stamina is as 
able to contend with the cold of that region, as his 
purse is with its expenses. Appoint W. C. Preston to 
Mexico, he is a giant in mind and possesses all the quali- 
ties that constitute greatness. Smith stands at the 
head of the radical alias anti-Calhoun party. Preston's 
influence reaches into Virginia also. In Smith's place 
we will send you Governor Miller. The president will 
probably remember he was his friend long since. I am 
aware that all your correspondents may not write so 
free and frank — nay more, by possibility, it may be 
esteemed too much so — disinterestedness however is not 
easily alarmed by appearances, and as there is nothing 
in the gift of government that I want, I am contented 
to run the risks. I am anxious to make this impression 
on you, that Mr. Calhoun holds influence here, only 
because his opponents are not properly recognized at 
Washington. A display then, adverse to him, will en- 
able us to triumph over him and his friends here, that 
we have, so far as State questions are concerned effected 
that triumph already and can remain superior, if sup- 
ported by such means as are right and proper. But 
without these means we cannot. And that according 
to my judgment, no one else likely to arise, is as likely 
to receive support here as you are. I have only to add, 

263 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

if I am mistaken as to what may be your views, my 
good will must excuse this intrusion on you and you 
will burn this letter; but if not mistaken, you may rely 
on me for frank information and all the little service I 
can render. 

"Yours respectfully, 

"David R. Williams." 

The references to prominent men in the letter quoted 
show that the time had not arrived for a definite classi- 
fication of individuals in their party affiliations. The 
eloquent W. G. Preston, of whom he had an exalted 
opinion, had already, if the Spy of Columbia is good 
authority, aligned himself with the progressives. "Poor 
Sims of the Telescope and his aids," said the Spy, re- 
puted to have been Professor Henry who later aban- 
doned the nullifiers, "were about the same time (1829) 
brought over to their service by fair promises of thrift, 
to aid their course, which was then too slow in its prog- 
ress. But he not having courage enough for a bravo 
was soon paid his wages, dismissed the service and his 
press transferred to the estate of Gol. Preston & Go. 
What was the conduct of the Telescope about that time? 
The influential men of the Union Party were slandered, 
vilified, abused and black-guarded without mercy or 
the least ceremony." Preston afterward broke with 
Galhoun as Labienus did with Gsesar and with fortunes 
somewhat paralleled. Miller, whom he never deserted, 
went the same way, having developed gradually and 
normally. Poinsett, Minister to Mexico, was probably 
on his way to Charleston at the time, having been re- 
lieved by an under officer. Colonel Butler. Poinsett 
had become unpopular with the Church in Mexico and 

264 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

also had offended by the introduction of Masonry into 
the country. President Jackson advised, because of 
Poinsett's influential enemies in Mexico, that "Mr. 
Poinsett with his secretary be invited home, in such a 
way as will preserve his feelings and give no cause for 
exultation by this minority (in Mexico) or his enemies. " 
On his return to Charleston he spoke and wrote against 
nullification and was elected a member of the legislature 
in 1830. It is said that he was authorized by Jackson 
to obtain arms and ammunition from the government 
supplies in Charleston harbor, for the use of the Union 
military companies. Governor Middleton was relieved 
August 3, 1830, from his foreign post, spent the summer of 
1831 in Greenville, and in 1832 was elected to represent 
that district in the nullification convention (Perry) 
where he joined forces with General Williams' son and 
successor in support of the Union cause. About Sena- 
tor Smith, he made no erroneous inferences; but after 
his defeat, he left the state, disgusted perhaps not less 
with the conduct of a few of his former friends than 
displeased with the tactics of the Calhounites. Fate 
was hard with him in politics but kinder in reference to 
the choice of a wife and the accumulation of property. 
Jackson's offer of judicial honors to him in another 
state was a late recognition of his services and its dec- 
lination stands as a witness to the strong-willed in- 
eflTiciency seated in the White House. Smith was the 
reputed owner of fine plantations and about eight hun- 
dred slaves when Charon summoned him into the boat. 
The Union leader in Greenville district was only 23 
years old, but he had seen enough not to be surprised at 
anything that happened. His thoughts on this sub- 
ject were put in the Mountaineer in September, 1830: 

265 



**-~-^-^"~'^'' ■-*- ->-v.\.. 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

*'It often happens that a man who pursues a steady 
course through hfe, will at different times see the same 
person first a long way behind him and then greatly in 
advance. Just so it has been on the tariff question. 
We now see many persons at least five years ahead of 
us on the subject, who were some time since, more than 
ten years behind us. In 1824, we first began to form 
our opinion about this matter. We set our face against 
the tariff and denounced it in private conversation and 
in public societies. In 1826, we expressed our decided 
opposition to it. In 1828, we pronounced it contrary 
to the spirit of the Constitution, highly oppressive on 
the Southern country and entered into resolutions of 
non-consumption. During all this time, some of our 
friends who are now running far ahead of us were either 
advocating the policy and constitutionality of the pro- 
tective system, or they were maintaining a profound 
silence on the subject. They then believed the tariff 
cheapened articles of domestic manufacture and that 
it was highly improper for the people to be holding anti- 
tariff meetings, catching unnecessary excitement. But 
those persons who then believed it wrong for the people 
to be informed of their oppressions at public meetings, 
now think the same people should meet in convention 
and say what is to be done. In 1828, it was improper 
that the people should oppose the tariff by non-con- 
sumption or petition the government for a redress of 
their grievances or even be informed on the subject. 
But in 1830, it is all important that the people should 
meet without delay and declare whether they will 
submit, like cowards, or right themselves as freemen." 
Such and similar experiences were the lot of the steady- 
going men all over the state. Calhoun's toast in July 

266 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

showed that he too saw men moving in several direc- 
tions: " Consohdation and disunion — The two extremes 
of our system: they are both equally dangerous, and 
ought both to be equally the object of our apprehen- 
sion." Some unknown person in a toast exhibited, in 
the midst of the general excitement, analytical genius: 
"The Tariff — Born in generosity, baptized in avarice, 
and reared by an amalgamation of heterogeneous inter- 
ests, we fear its death cannot be natural ; whilst it lives, 
it continually accumulates over us, fearful masses, of 
combustible material." The voice of McDufTie was 
heard in Abbeville district uttering hard and melan- 
choly truths in a train of reasoning that appeared to 
his hearers unanswerable: "We are in effect slaves, and 
that the Northern manufacturers are our masters; and 
that we acted in the capacity of overseers for our north- 
ern brethren and that they really share a greater profit 
from the production of our labor than we do ourselves. " 
The attitude of General Williams on this juncture when 
the legislators to be chosen should decide about the call 
of a Convention is also at hand : " I am for preventing all 
irascibihty among ourselves; to treat the resentment 
and even violence of others, not only with gentleness 
but respect. I am willing those who have resented 
loudest and highest shall be permitted to take any 
course they please that will allow their courage to ooze 
out of their fingers' ends most agreeably to themselves; 
but with this understanding, they have reproved and 
scolded long enough. It has become too serious to 
keep up the quarrel, 'tis time for moderation and reason. 
In short and plainly, I am for peace, under any existing 
state of things that, I think likely to arise, rather than 
civil war." 

267 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

In midsummer an anonymous writer in Charleston 
wrote to a daily: "I was delighted to see in your paper 
of Saturday, General Williams indicated as a candidate 
for chief magistrate at the next election. How gratify- 
ing will it be to the people of (South) Carolina to have 
him at this crisis, in the chair of state. His manly 
patriotism, his attachment to state rights, his fearless 
independence, all point him out as the most eligible 
citizen for that high station. I know but one other who 
could divide the public sentiment; I need not say it is 
that distinguished citizen, who when Carolina, during 
the last war, resolved on raising a brigade of State 
troops, elected him to be commander of it. These two 
patriots will not stand in the way of each other. They 
have but one object — the public good. We must have 
a calm, reflecting temperate governor who 'under the 
right to fight,' will take care that the rights of the State 
are not invaded nor those of the government of the 
United States usurped." "Under the right to' fight," 
was a quotation from Stephen D. Miller's toast: "The 
right to fight — the only law of nations worth preserv- 
ing." 

"A native Carohnian" followed up the preceding with : 
". . . If there is a citizen who, by the moral in- 
fluence of character, can restore harmony to the union, 
in whose support all parties, having in view the true 
interests of the Country, would unite and who would 
command the confidence of the people — that citizen is 
General Wilhams. To him are our hopes and anx- 
ious anticipations directed. Let this second call of his 
country be made from every section, decisive, loud and 
unequivocal — let it be made from the people, for the 
maintenance of those principles which are interwoven 

268 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

in our political institutions and which form the basis 
of our union. A voice so expressed will not be diso- 
beyed — a claim upon his patriotism will not be disre- 
garded. To him let us entrust the helm of state; and 
under his guidance all shall be well again." 

The Couriers containing this call for him to come to 
the rescue of the ship of state were handed him by a 
neighbor. He had been wilted, completely prostrated 
and in a state of lassitude consequent upon bleeding 
and physicking, "having been severely shocked in the 
upper region." He did not feel complimented when he 
awoke to the fact that he was drifting apart from his 
friends and being praised by his enemies. "What have 
I done that my enemies praise me?" was his solemn self- 
inquiry. He had already been requested by letters to 
go to the legislature, just as Judge Huger and Pettigru 
were trying to do, to thwart the calling of a Convention ; 
and he was also requested to come out for Governor; 
but having no appetite for political honors, he sent his 
refusal. He had many reasons for declining such 
honors, not the least among them being the difficulty of 
sailing under his own colors in a motley constituency. 

He had now reached that point where he ceased to 
fear for the Union, but he apprehended that the char- 
acter of the state would suffer. Under this impression 
he wrote to Gov. Miller (August 11): "I sincerely hope 
the state right dinner, to be eaten at Sumter, will mani- 
fest much less of downright madness, than that of 
Charleston. If it shall indicate half the same sort of 
violence and insanity, it will probably put every moder- 
ate man in the State electioneering. I am deeply 
interested that this shall not be, for the applications 
that have been and continue to be made to me, about 

269 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

the executive office, will, I fear, in that event, be much 
more serious. You will pardon this seeming vanity 
which, in truth, is not such. I wish you should clearly 
and fully believe that I have no disposition to commence 
another crusade against all my wishes and interests, 
and am utterly too little of a salamander to take pleas- 
ure in the fiery ordeal through which every man must 
pass, not absolutely a cipher, who, enters upon the 
public service. I understand I am held up as a candi- 
date in some papers, do not I pray you, believe for a 
single moment that, I am such. I think I never will 
be again under any circumstances; nor again enter 
public life. No man of correct principles can say he 
never will; because, under emergencies, a well ordered 
mind must feel that the public are not to be refused, 
when a necessity exists. No such thing does now, nor 
can, so far as my poor self is concerned. I therefore 
hope you will be very explicit, if chance throws this 
matter into conversation, where you may happen to 
be. In God's truth, I had as lieve succeed Preston in a 
speech as you in the Executive office. I have no other 
way to make myself understood, but through my 
friends. " 

In reference to Miller's Sumter speech, General 
WiUiams said to him, "if I had been at your elbow I 
would have asked you to suppress two ideas which I 
see in it; and it is not impossible that, the first friend 
you might have met afterwards would have insisted for 
the retention of those very portions of it." 

Within one month of his death, November 17, 1830, 
General WiUiams wrote two letters which explain his 
position in politics and why he dechned to be a candi- 
date against James Hamilton or any other person for 

270 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

the Chief Magistracy. The first one was written to 
Governor Miller: 

"You are not more opposed to the tariff than I am; 
the only difference is how shall we resist it. It is clear 
to my understanding that the vital interest of the whole 
Southern country has been staken on a system of federal 
legislation, unwise in policy, unjust in action and at war 
with the principles of the Constitution. Its progress 
has been slow but as steady as time and will be, if per- 
sisted in, as fatal as death. But it is the whole system, 
not a particular part of it that excites my abhorrence, 
and merits the deepest censure. That system is made 
up of the original sin of the Federal government, the 
bank of the United States; the imposition of high duties 
for the protection of manufacturers, and the squander- 
ing of those duties in the form of internal improvements, 
committing the faith of the government, on a scale of 
extravagance which all the revenues of the civilized 
world cannot sustain. When you add to these, the 
mortifying and ruinous fact that, the central govern- 
ment takes all it can from us and returns nothing back, 
you have the story of some of our wrongs that every 
son of Carolina, not a bastard, must be anxious to 
relieve her from. But bad as all this is, they are better 
than dissension and civil war. Do not imagine that I 
think Major Hamilton, General Hayne, Mr. McDufTie 
or Governor Miller could design such an issue a moment 
sooner than myself; or, look with the slightest possible 
favor on such intent. ... It is, however, my mis- 
fortune to differ from these gentlemen, not concerning 
our wrongs, but how we shall get rid of them. I think 
the heat that has been manifested is too great to last. 

271 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

I fear that violence may bring our doctrine into dis- 
repute. I believe nullification will lead to conflict with 
the General Government. As to convention, in addi- 
tion to the objections that have been urged, I feel forci- 
bly one which I have not seen argued. No man can 
assign limits to the reaction which the excitement of 
the public mind has caused. Suppose the convention 
called and it shall decide contrary to the doctrine as- 
serted by the legislature, what becomes of opposition 
to the tariff and the whole vile system? Will it not 
suffer a total parallisis from that moment? But you 
may ask, if opposed to all these measures will I fold 
my arms and submit? Not certainly before the ' argu- 
ment is exhausted.' I am determined with Governor 
Miller to 'keep the head of my canoe against the stream 
of consohdation ' as long as it runs. The sublimest 
political sentiment I ever read was uttered in these 
words, 'error of opinion may be tolerated, while reason 
is left free to combat it.' This lies at the bottom of 
all our institutions. Our governments are founded on 
reason and it therefore is a fit and rightful remedy. The 
people, I believe, are competent to self-government, 
that is, good government. When they (I mean the 
people of the United States) discover injustice, they 
will remove it. In this I feel a perfect confidence. But 
if the people of South Carolina feel that their wrongs 
are intolerable, and will not wait this progress, altho 
it has clearly commenced, surely there are other meas- 
ures still in reserve, without rushing into those that are 
alike miserable and ruinous. Where are the other 
Southern States? Certainly not blotted from our sys- 
tem, nor suffering less than we are. It appears to me 
that no well ordered mind will seek to commit South 

272 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Carolina alone, with the general government. Let the 
Legislature then at its next meeting commence the task 
of concert and cooperation. Let it forbear all further 
abstract declarations about our wrongs and our rights, 
but go practically to work. Open communications 
with the states interested. Ascertain definitely to what 
extent and how they will cooperate. If they will do 
anything in conjunction, be it what it may, there is 
hope; but if they will do nothing, then indeed is our 
case most serious, but not more ours than theirs. In 
that event we shall be thrown back for redress on the 
whole people of the United States, a recourse which, in 
my poor opinion, ought first to be tried; for although 
we may bury ourselves in the ruins of our country. 
South Carolina alone can use no means of forcible re- 
sistance less burthensome than the evils now inflicted 
on her. 

'"The reign of Terror' of the elder Adams made me a 
republican; a term, according to my understanding, 
convertible with state rights and radicals. During an 
alarming period of the last war I had an opportunity 
of manifesting altho only a few personal friends and the 
then administration of the General Government knew 
it, how serious and abiding were the doctrines of state 
rights, so embraced by me. The subsequent and sys- 
tematic encroachments of that government on the con- 
stitution have confirmed my early principles yet more 
firmly, and therefore have I most heartily expounded 
the state right doctrines, promulgated by the Legisla- 
ture. From a cause in which my mind has been thus 
long settled, I shall not be easily diverted. You tell 
me that Major Hamilton is willing to consider me a 
candidate in the field, brought out against him on prin- 

273 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

ciple. I have held communications with no man on 
that subject, but to express my decided refusal. I 
shun public life with the utmost solicitude and espe- 
cially the executive office. I am not a candidate nor 
can any circumstances make me one. This declaration 
seems a matter of equal indifference to my friends and 
to their opponents. I receive cold and freezing looks 
from one, and shameless abuse from the other. I have 
been denounced as a friend to the tariff, a submission 
man, and a Tory. As I cannot be enticed from my 
convictions, so neither will I be driven from them; and 
in no account will I fight under any colours but of my 
own choosing. The sole satisfaction which public life 
has heretofore yielded me, is an introduction to the 
friendship and esteem of Macon, Crawford, Smith and 
Miller, while these and a few others, tho' less in the 
public eye, not less in my heart, kindly tolerate my in- 
firmities, I will not retort an angry word on those who 
have applied hard terms to me wholly without provo- 
cation on my part. All I now seek is practical useful- 
ness to the state and my family; and that, when I am 
gone, it may be said of me, he never deserted a friend 
or injured a neighbour. 

''Stephen D. Miller, Esq., Gov. Sc Com. in Chief etc., 
near Camden, S. C. 
" Society Hill, Oct. 19." 

On the same day that his principles were set forth 
he gave his final and definite refusal to be a candidate. 
Edgefield citizens had seconded the call for General 
Wilhams, and a letter persuading him to allow his name 
to be used by his friends for the governorship came from 
his partner and friend. Col. Chesnut: 

274 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

"In the few hints you have dropped, concerning my 
yielding to the wishes of my best friends, there is so 
much of earnestness I very much fear, it may in truth 
have reached to others, as well as to you that, I ought 
to be the next governor. I can more easily resist it 
at a distance than in close contact with my friends. 
This matter has been very seriously considered — there 
is not a single circumstance in my opinion which 
prompts me to yield, while thousands upon thousands 
urge to the reverse. Putting my own wishes out of 
the case, I fear I should in so yielding raise in my own 
mind, when too late to repent a cause, not only of re- 
gret, but of self-reproach. When I induced you gentle- 
men to hazard your money in the Factory, altho' I 
entered into no obligation for personal attention, I am 
as certain as tho' I did, that you all consented under a 
behef that, I would give it, to the full extent that was 
necessary. I know without that belief, neither of you 
would have thought of it, for more than an instant. If 
I suffer myself to be drawn from home, it will be best at 
once to put fire to the whole rather than waste the earn- 
ings of our industry on it. You owners are urging this 
thing on me, but altho' you might acquit me of backing 
out, my mind I fear would never after feel reconciled. 
Is it worth while, then, in me to suffer any consideration 
to entice me to such a state of reflection? Your fine 
sentiments of honor can give but one answer. Then my 
dear Chesnut, let this affair of the next governor be, 
from this moment, never renewed between us." 

His death occurred in the midst of this campaign. 
His policy, however, was continued by his son Nicholas 
who was elected to the legislature, in which body a 
speech by him against calling a convention was circu- 

275 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

lated as an able document. The issue of Nullification 
is well known and the views about its wisdom or unwis- 
dom sharply divided the people in the state. The dif- 
ference between Calhoun and General Williams was 
reduced to the single point of how best to resist federal 
usurpation. Williams wanted to withdraw out of the 
reach of the predatory law, not from the Union; Cal- 
houn wanted to "slow down" the government machine, 
examine and correct its defects, make compromises by 
which peace and justice might be secured within the 
Union. It is said in the Encyclopaedia Britannica 
that Dr. Thomas Cooper, Professor in the South Caro- 
lina College, "preceded Calhoun in advocating a prac- 
tical application of the State sovereignty principle." 
Calhoun was familiar with the nullification principles 
as applied by the Ephors at Sparta, the Tribunes at 
Rome, and with its widest application in Poland; but he 
based his Nullification on the Kentucky and Virginia 
resolutions brought out by the Adams administration. 
The government was not yet fifty years old, and it was 
not unpatriotic to strive to engraft in the working 
machinery of the government a power somewhere which 
is yet a desideratum to check a fierce majority; but it 
presupposed a patriotism in his adversaries that is 
never found in a majority, a willingness to resign volun- 
tarily its own advantage in favor of the weaker party. 
General Williams was six years older than Mr. Cal- 
houn, and the latter served in the general government 
more than three times longer than the former and sur- 
vived him about twenty years. They were both born 
in the country and became agricultural statesmen. 
Both were reared in pious families which were able to 
send them to Northern colleges for their higher educa- 

276 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

tion. They were church goers and reverent men, but 
neither ever became a communicant. 

Both of our statesmen were men of spotless character 
and passed through trying scenes Hke gold seven times 
purified. General Williams was warm hearted, cour- 
teous, strong in his power of analysis and synthesis, 
wiser than Calhoun perhaps in reading men, and not 
less strenuous in digging down to the naked truth; 
eloquent, patriotic, and rounded out in other elements of 
true greatness. He cut short his political career to 
apply himself to plantation improvements, and having 
spent his ripest years in devotement to agricultural and 
manufacturing interests, he passed away and passed 
out of the pubhc mind. Calhoun was intellect incar- 
nate, lucid, invincible in discourse. His life was spent 
in the public eye and his death was spectacular and 
his funeral obsequies were second only say to Wash- 
ington's. Both General WilUams and Senator Calhoun 
represented minorities and both of them were prophets. 
All prophets are out of the swim; they stand on the 
bank and see things as they are and are unheeded. Cal- 
houn foresaw what the Abolitionists would do, even to 
the arming of the slaves with the right of suffrage; 
and Williams saw what would be the end of the unprof- 
itable strife to do each other the most harm. Each 
had his enemies and misinterpreters. Williams' plain 
and correct statement about majority rule and Cal- 
houn's opinion about cotton factories in the state, for 
example, were both misinterpreted,* as if a sentence, 

*The following extracts taken from Gregg's pamphlet, 1845, in the possession of Mr. 
August Kohn, probably came under the eye of Mr. Calhoun, but, as usual, he opened 
not his mouth: 

"Even Mr. Calhoun, our great oracle — a statesman whose purity of character we 
all revere— whose elevation to the highest office in the gift of the people of the United 

277 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

a thought, could be treated justly apart from a man's 
whole life and conduct. But Calhoun being in public 
life, was the most thoroughly hated as well as the 
most thoroughly trusted man in the nation. But 
Providence was kind to him in one respect. After all 
the agencies, including Von Hoist's biography, had 
done their utmost, Calhoun's voluminous correspond- 
ence was printed in 1899 and it at once rendered anti- 
quated many effusions of his critics, and placed him 
back upon his own pedestal. Daniel Webster, whom 
Calhoun pronounced on his deathbed the fairest antago- 
nist he ever contended with, became unpopular and 
died almost broken-hearted and deserted by New Eng- 
land. He had been a poor manager and had been 
financed in his latter years by manufacturers. (Lodge.) 
Henry Clay in his old age was so deep in debt that it 
was a heavy burden to keep the interest paid up. He 
was surprised at last when his creditor told him that 
his obligations had been cancelled by friends who were 
so discreet that Clay never found out who they were. 
(Wentworth.) Calhoun owed something less than 
140,000 at the time of his death but was not bankrupt. 
When his health began to fail, his friends in Charleston 

States would enlist the undivided vote of South Carolina — even he is against us in this 
matter; he will tell you that no mechanical enterprise will succeed in South Carolina — 
that good mechanics will go where their talents are better rewarded — that to thrive 
in cotton spinning one should go to Rhode Island — that to undertake it here, will not 
only lead to loss of capital, but disappointment and ruin to those who engage in it." 
. . . "There are those who understand some things as well, if not better, than 
other people, who have taken the pains to give this subject a thorough investigation 
and who could probably give, even Mr. Calhoun a practical lesson concerning it. The 
known zeal with which this distinguished gentleman has always engaged in everything 
relating to the interest of South Carolina, forbids the idea that he is not a friend to 
domestic manufacturers, fairly brought about; and knowing, as he must know, the 
influence which he exerts, he should be more guarded in expressing opinions adverse 
to so good a cause." 

278 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

gathered a sum of money to buy or lease a yacht in 
order that the honored senator might rest and recuper- 
ate in a sea voyage. His death having occurred earher 
than was expected, the |40,000 was used by the con- 
tributors to extinguish the debt which would have 
swallowed up a large part of the estate. (Simpson.) 

General Williams lived fifty-four years and packed in 
that fleeting period a century of achievements which 
have been already imperfectly narrated; and in addi- 
tion he accumulated and left a property for his children, 
abundant and unencumbered, and a name above any- 
thing that is sordid, selfish, unpatriotic, sinister, or 
crooked. He never deserted a friend or injured a neigh- 
bor. 

Sources: The Records of the State Senate, Perry's 
Reminiscences, The Spy of Columbia, Calhoun's Let- 
ters, Landrum's History of Spartanburg, Wentworth's 
Congressional Reminiscences, Jervey's Robert Y. 
Hayne, General Williams' Letters and Articles, the 
Mountaineer of Greenville, the Courier, Mercury, and 
City Gazette of Charleston, 1827-1830; Articles by 
Colonel R. W. Simpson, Attorney for Thomas Clemson, 
son-in-law of John C. Calhoun. 



279 



CHAPTER XXIII 

HIS DEATH AND BURIAL 

ON THE 17th of October, 1830, General Wil- 
liams wrote to his friend Colonel Chesnut as 
follows: "I am going to Lynch's Creek to- 
morrow to arrange for commencing to raise the bridge. 
I shall be there only a few hours, it being still impru- 
dent, altho' I think quite safe to stay there. I hope it 
will suit you to spare me some carpenters. I design to 
begin work as nearly after the 1st of November as 
possible. I have imagined as my fields abound in 
pumpkins and peas, it may be quite as agreeable to you 
to lend your carpenters a poor mule and cart, as for me 
to send out for them; if so I shall only have to write 
when I want them which I will do immediately after 
my return from the Creek." 

It was in the Indian summer period of the year when 
the bulk of the crops had been gathered, early in No- 
vember, that General Williams collected his teams and 
hands at Witherspoon Ferry, some fifty miles distant. 
There he cut the timber, hauled it to the spot, and had 
already begun to extend the framework of the bridge 
he came to build over the stream. While under the 
bridge, a heavy log fell upon him and crushed both legs 
below the knee and wounded unto death two of the 
men. One version of the fatal accident represents the 

280 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

negro axeman as remonstrating but nevertheless obe- 
dient when commanded to knock out the prop no longer 
thought to be necessary. (DuBose.) Another was 
that "a massive piece of timber escaped unexpectedly 
from the position in which it had been placed, and 
falling upon a part of his body, crushed him (Corre- 
spondent of the Christian Index who had gotten Mrs. 
Williams' account). The third version agrees with the 
second, "some portion of the timber, accidentally fell 
upon him, while in the act of giving directions, brake 
both legs, etc." The excruciating shock did not cause 
the sufferer to lose his presence of mind; his thought 
was for his injured servants whom he had cared for 
first. Another, at his command, took out a lancet 
from his pocket and bled him. Daddy Smart was sent 
with a message to the family (Furman) over a distance 
which would require all night and an hour or two of 
daylight to accomplish it. In the meantime, while 
these hours were being spent on the road, there were 
troubled dreams at "the Factory," which were recorded 
and handed down by men of good repute. One of 
them rests upon the authority of James C. Furman, 
who was four years after the event a guest for ten 
months in the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Wilhams. It is 
found in the Historical Sketch of the Welsh Neck 
Church, 1888, and is told as coming direct from her: 
"On a given morning (Nov. 18, 1830) at the breakfast 
table, Mrs. Williams stated she had a very vivid dream 
the night before. She had dreamed that a special 
messenger. Smart, one of the General's favorite serv- 
ants, riding 'the clay-bank mare,' one of the numerous 
animals taken to the scene of labor, had brought word 
that General W'illiams was fatally injured. The table 

281 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

having been cleared away, Mrs. Williams took her seat 
as usual and opened the volume before her, when the 
noise of the opening of a gate on the eastern side of the 
lawn attracted her attention, and sure enough there was 
Smart riding the clay-bank mare. Powerfully im- 
pressed by the strange coincidence, she cast her eyes 
upon the volume before her and read the words, 'Be 
still and know that I am God. ' Just then and there, 
as she subsequently averred, did she bow herself abso- 
lutely to the righteous sovereignty of God. In the 
exercise of an unqualified submission, she accepted 
Christ as of God made unto wisdom and righteousness 
and sanctification and redemption. Thus in an hour 
of deepest darkness, light sprang up. The messenger 
had brought word that General Williams, though badly 
crushed by fallen timbers, was still alive, and Mrs. W., 
accompanied by the accomplished and skillful physi- 
cian, Dr. Thomas Smith, was soon on the way to the 
scene of the disaster. May I mention, by the way, 
that General W. would not allow a thing to be done for 
his own relief until the servants who were injured had 
been first attended to. He blamed himself for an un- 
necessary risk, in raising heavy timbers, involving 
danger to others, as well as to himself, and then he was 
a fine example of a type of character which the patriar- 
chal form of Southern society tended to nourish — a just, 
generous, noble care for the well-being of dependents." 
The other dream was related by his grandson, David 
R. WiUiams, son of J. N. Wilhams, and is found in 
"The Wilhams Family of Society Hill": "He was then 
a boy of eight, and his mother being dead, he was living 
in his grandfather's house. On the night following the 
accident, he had a vivid dream, in which he saw his 

282 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

grandfather, evidently injured, being brought home on 
the big blue wagon driven by Daddy Smart. So vivid 
and terrifying was the dream that at four in the morn- 
ing he awoke his grandmother to tell her of it. She 
tried to reassure him and he returned to bed. In the 
morning, however, a messenger arrived, saying that 
General Williams was seriously injured; and so she and 
young David hurriedly drove with a physician down 
toward Lynch's Creek. On the way they met the blue 
wagon driven by Smart." 

The news of the distressing accident spread with 
rapidity, and eclipsed so completely his funeral obse- 
quies that there is not one word, oral or written, con- 
cerning it. The day after the burial, logically conducted 
by Rev. Mr. Dossey, in the presence of a great con- 
course from all the countryside and neighboring places, 
a correspondent of a paper in Philadelphia visited Mrs. 
WiUiams and furnished Editor W. T. Brantly of the 
Christian Index the information which drew out the 
following: "Our correspondent at Society Hill confirms 
the painful account of the afflictive and unexpected 
end of this distinguished citizen of South Carolina. He 
was superintending the construction of a bridge, when 
the calamitous visitation overtook him. A massive 
piece of timber escaped unexpectedly from the position 
in which it had been placed, and falUng upon a part of 
his body, crushed him in such a manner that he died 
shortly after. From the flush of health, and a most 
conspicuous station in society, he was suddenly pre- 
cipitated into the gloomy grave. Our correspondent 
says, 'I have just returned from a visit to his bereft 
widow, and learn that his remains were yesterday 
deposited in the family burial ground.' General Wil- 

283 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

liams had occupied many public stations with great 
honor to himself and benefit to others. He was a man 
of prominent talents and enterprise, patriotic, generous, 
and brave. He was a kind and affectionate relative, an 
ardent friend, and a candid enemy. Such a citizen 
would be a serious loss to any community; but to that 
in which he lived, his loss in many respects will be irrep- 
arable." 

One week before General Williams' death, the Pendle- 
ton Messenger mentioned that his name had been pro- 
posed as candidate for Governor. He, however, had 
promptly disclaimed any intention to appear before the 
people. Its testimony concerning his official conduct 
was, "he has ably and faithfully discharged his duties 
and has left behind him an honorable and enviable 
reputation." The Charleston Courier remarked that 
"The premature death of so virtuous, talented, and 
patriotic citizen, would at any time have been a source 
of deep regret; but the dispensation is doubly severe at 
the present political juncture, when the State requires 
the aid of its ablest pilots to direct its course in the 
political troubles with which it is surrounded." 

The Camden JournaVs remarks are fuller and are 
drawn from an intimate acquaintance with its deceased 
friend and contributor: "It is with no common sorrow 
that we announce the death of David R. Williams. He 
died at Witherspoon Ferry on Lynch's Creek on Wed- 
nesday morning of last week aged fifty-four years. 
The circumstances attending this melancholy event 
render it even more peculiarly distressing. He was 
superintending the erection of a bridge over the Creek, 
and while in the act of giving directions, some portions 
of the timber accidentally fell upon him, brake both 

284 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

legs below the knee, and otherwise bruised and shattered 
his frame in the most shocking manner. Notwith- 
standing this, however, he never for a moment lost his 
presence of mind, but with perfect knowledge of his 
situation and with the utmost self-possession he directed 
a servant to take from his pocket a lancet and bleed 
him copiously, which was done. After lingering in 
the excruciating pain for seventeen hours, he expired, 
and before any member of his family could reach him, 
the accident having occurred fifty miles from home. 

"We doubt whether South Carohna (has a citizen) 
whose loss at this time would be more deeply lamented. 
General Wilhams was a favorite and cherished son. 
There is scarcely an office from the highest to the hum- 
blest that he has not either filled or been sohcited to do 
so, and always with most distinguished faithfulness and 
ability. The deceased was educated at Brown Uni- 
versity and was called in early life to important offices 
by his fellow-citizens — was elected to Congress (in 1805) 
where he served till 1813 (except 1809-11), and during 
that time was a distinguished, zealous, and most useful 
representative, serving for a long time at the head of 
the most important committee of the House. In 1813 
he was appointed Brigadier- General in the United 
States Army and served for some time with General 
Boyd on the northern frontier. His services there were 
of the most active and laborious character and his zeal 
and gallantry were evincive of the highest chivalry. 
But we all know the unfortunate mode which some of 
our northern campaigns were conducted. General 
Williams became disgusted and requested to be em- 
ployed at the South, and he was accordingly transferred 
to the Southern Army. Soon after that he resigned, 

285 



*r<t ■'^■*f'tt»!w*' 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

and in 1814 he was elected Governor of the State; the 
first intimation of which high distinction was given to 
him on his own plantation by a communication from 
the legislature. After serving out his constitutional 
period, General Williams was a distinguished and in- 
fluential member of the Senate of the State and has been 
repeatedly and most urgently solicited again to fill the 
gubernatorial chair. Indeed his fellows have always 
been urged to obtain his public service, in proportion 
to the difficulties in which they have seen the State 
involved. The highest reliance has always been placed 
in the firmness, energy, and patriotism of David R. 
Williams. Few men possessed so great a versatility of 
character, so much, if the expression be a warrantable 
one, of the stamina of popularity, as General Williams. 
The isolated excellences of great men were found com- 
bined in him. He was a gallant soldier, a most courtly 
gentleman, a firm, ardent, and sometimes, perhaps, an 
impetuous public functionary, at the same time that 
he was the blandest and most amiable man in the pri- 
vate circles of life. The kindest husband, parent, 
friend, while he was the most active, indefatigable and 
enterprising citizen. His house was the home of hospi- 
tality and his great wealth, the fund upon which charity 
never found a draft dishonored."* 

The spot where this illustrious Pee Deean was laid 
to rest is in sight of Robbin's Neck depot. The hal- 

*An elderly woman who knew him only by reputation came to General Williams 
one night to solicit aid in saving her son from the clutches of the law for some defal- 
cation. He furnished the money and the youth went to work, made good and re- 
turned every dollar. (N. W. Kirkpatrick.) General Williams allowed his neighbor- 
liness in the time of no banks to overcome his judgment. After having paid a note 
endorsed by him, he met Dr. Smith on one of his plantations and said, "Hold up your 
hands: Swear: '1 will never go security.'" It has been handed down that 170,000 
was paid out by his estate on security debts. 

286 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

lowed spot is shaded by a majestic elm, and cedar trees 
draped with pendent moss stand as unwearied sentinels 
about it. Upon a rectangular brick wall around the 
grave still kept in good order was placed a marble slab, 
containing this epitaph : 



TO THE MEMORY 
OF 

DA.VID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

who died the 17th day of November, 1830, at Lynch's 
Creek, Witherspoon Ferry. He died of wounds re- 
ceived while erecting a bridge at that place 
of which he suffered 17 hours, aged 54 
years, eight months and nine days. 

Not to perpetuate his worth but to 
make more sacred 

THIS SPOT 

Which retains the memories of him who was as 
kind as he was virtuous 

THIS MONUMENT ERECTED 
BY HIS WIDOW 

ELIZABETH WILLIAMS 



287 



CHAPTER XXIV 

HIS LEGACY AND DESCENDANTS 

THE last will and testament made by General 
Williams appointed Mrs. Williams executrix 
and J. N. Williams executor. After his death 
J. M. Davis, John K. Mclver and D. R. W. Mclver 
were appointed to appraise the estate. They mentioned 
the Factory, the Upper Quarter, the Middle Quarter, 
the Barn Plantation and Plumfield, only to specify 
the property left upon them. The number of acres in 
each and their estimated value did not come under this 
purview. Other land belonging to the estate was fifty 
miles distant and it was not to be touched during Mrs. 
Williams' lifetime. 

At the Factory, where the family resided, there were 
20 male and 24 female slaves, with 19 children. Two 
yoke of oxen with suitable carts and wagons, 40 sows, 
shoats and pigs, 7,000 pounds of bacon and one-half 
interest in a store. There is no appraisal of the cotton 
factory, grist mills, shoe and hat factories, etc., of cash 
on hand, bonds, or of the cotton crop of 1830. The 
house furniture was put down at $2,155, three shotguns 
and rifles |200, kitchen furniture $200, carriage horses 
and sulky $300, saddle horses $375, library $400, goods 
in the store $2,000. The estimates may be considered 
as low rather than high as only one negro servant in 

288 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

63 was rated as high as $700, and Smart, the favorite 
servant of the deceased master, and four others were 
valued at $600 each. Some thirty-six of them were un- 
der $300. The mules were assessed at an average of $50. 

At the Upper Quarter there were 27 male and 24 
female slaves. Here also were 4 mares, 1 jack, 64 
mules, 172 head of cattle, 5 yoke of oxen and 6 vehicles. 
These animals congregated at the Upper Quarter in 
the winter time, belonged, it is supposed, also to the 
other plantations. On this place were found 120 hogs, 
70 head of sheep and 7,000 pounds of bacon, 1,500 bush- 
els of corn, 25,000 pounds of fodder and plantation tools. 
Five of the servants at the Upper Quarter were valued 
at $1 each. They were evidently old men and women 
who were past active field labor and were on the pension 
list. Only one was valued at $500. 

At the Middle Quarter there were 25 males and 20 
females, 85 head of hogs, plantation tools, 5 carts and 
wagons, 1,800 pounds of fodder and 2,500 pounds of 
bacon. 

At the Barn Plantation were found 23 males and 
24 females, 3,300 bushels of corn, 33 stacks of fodder, 100 
head of hogs, 5 carts and wagons, 6,000 pounds of bacon. 

At Plumfield there were 19 males and 20 females, 
152 head of hogs, 1,000 bushels of corn, 30 stacks of 
fodder, 4,000 pounds of bacon, 5 carts and wagons, 
4 canoes and 1 boat and tackling. 

There were all told 245 dependents on the five plan- 
tations in 1831. 

Among these servants was not included the number 
Mrs. Williams brought with her from the Wltherspoon 
estate. Her household was sufficient for the working 
of the Upper Quarter left for her use. There were all 

289 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

told 7 yoke of oxen, 4 mares, 64 mules, 1 jack, 172 
cattle, 70 sheep, 497 swine, two months after more 
than 26,500 pounds of bacon had been placed in his 
smokehouses, 7,000 bushels of corn, 26,800 pounds of 
fodder and 63 stacks of the same. 

The sum total was $86,475, perhaps not a third or 
a fourth of the total value of the whole estate. The heir, 
J. Nicholas Williams, had been a widower about eight 
years and remained unmarried about a year longer. This 
period was lengthened somewhat by the age of the girl 
whom he desired to make his partner. Miss Sarah Canty 
Witherspoon was in her sixteenth year, just through 
her course of education, when Col. Nicholas Williams 
was attracted by her. General Williams was again his 
faithful ally and in a confidential way asked permis- 
sion of his friend, John Dick Witherspoon, for his son 
to address his daughter, on the supposition that the 
difference between twenty-eight and sixteen years was 
not an insuperable objection. A courtship, devoted 
and absorbing, reaching over a period of five years was 
followed by marriage in September, 1831. From this 
union were born six children : Serena Williams, Elizabeth 
Williams, who died young, John Witherspoon Williams, 
George Frederick Williams, Constance Williams, and 
Sarah Power Williams. 

Colonel Williams was a second edition of General 
Williams, perhaps inferior in intellectual ability and 
energy, but his equal in supervision of the large estate 
and in coining money. He was a dutiful son, had im- 
bibed his father's high courtly character and his political 
creed. Elegant* in manners, intelligent and hospitable, 

*What follows is largely adapted from Mr. J. VV. DuBose's recollection of Colonel 
Williams. 

290 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

he more than doubled the large estate inherited from 
his father and increased the number of his hands. He 
was a model husband and father, a guileless man, de- 
voted Christian and a regular attendant upon the 
services of the Episcopal Church. As to the liberality 
of his nature — the six children of his second wife never 
knew Colonel and Mrs. Chesnut, parents of his first 
wife, except as "grandfather" and "grandmother.'* 
He never lost the relation of son-in-law to his first 
wife's parents. 

Colonel Williams inherited his father's antipathy to 
Mr. Calhoun. It was probably in 1825, when Mr. 
Calhoun started by slow days' journeys to Washington 
as Vice-President, that he stopped at Cheraw and left 
reasons for his opponents believing he had a strong hold 
on the popular imagination. "He reached Cheraw by 
mail stage drawn by four horses about midday and 
dined at the Steimnitz Hotel. He was clean shaven 
except a fringe of beard around his throat for protection 
of the organ, it was alleged. At any rate, it was charged 
that not a man in Cheraw or vicinity showed a shaven 
throat for six months afterwards." 

The piazza of this Steimnitz Hotel, the loafing place 
of townsfolk and visitors, heard a great deal about the 
political questions of the day. Colonel WiUiams and 
Mr. Isaiah DuBose, who lived between Society Hill 
and Cheraw, met there at the time of the tariff discus- 
sions and the former, disheartened by the outlook, said, 
"I will sell every negro I own at an average price of 
$300." When he showed that it was a serious offer, 
the two shook hands over the trade in the presence of 
the company. Mr. DuBose drove eighty miles to a 
relative. Dr. Bishop, who agreed to be an equal partner 

291 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

in the trade. A day was appointed to take an inven- 
tory of the negroes. Colonel Williams met with his 
friends, but he begged off, his wife having declined to 
permit the actual sale. 

Colonel Williams was nominated and elected State 
Senator in 1830 and made a speech against a state 
convention which was printed in pamphlet form and 
drew out from Governor Perry the following: "Colonel 
Williams has always belonged to the old State Rights 
Party. He has not been shifting and veering with 
every political breeze, like some who now call them- 
selves the true State rights friends. No man can 
charge him with having been a federalist, or in favor of 
latitudinarian construction of the constitution. He was 
the active coadjutor of Senator Smith, in favor of a 
strict construction of the constitution, whilst the name 
of radical was a term of reproach, with the present 
ultra-state rights party. " 

He was also nominated as a Union man for the NulU- 
fication Convention of 1832 to represent Darlington. 
This same Isaiah DuBose was prevailed upon by the 
nullifiers to leave Cheraw and resume his old residence 
in Darlington, in order to oppose Colonel Williams' 
election. He acceded to their request, but in so doing 
he did not hinder the Colonel's triumphant election. 
In the confusion and divisions caused by Nullification, 
Colonel Williams remarked publicly at Darlington, in 
reference to Federal soldiers, "I will feed them a week 
if they come here." 

The political troubles having been quieted on several 
exciting occasions. Colonel Williams devoted the most of 
his life as an amiable and elegant gentleman, sur- 
charged with the milk of human kindness, to building 

292 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

up his estate and providing for a family of eight children. 
As each one became of age or married, the sum of 
$50,000 was put at his or her disposal, or property 
valued at that amount. His health was not robust. 
He weighed over 350 pounds and suffered from an acute 
incurable headache. About the first of April, 1861, he 
started on a European tour, accompanied by his wife, 
two unmarried daughters, John Witherspoon and his 
wife. He was too feeble to proceed farther than Balti- 
more, where he expired April 12, 1861. Just before 
his departure the remainder of his property was de- 
vised in his own language as follows: 

"I give and devise to my son John Witherspoon 
Williams my 'Barn Plantation,' now in his possession, 
containing nine hundred acres more or less of swamp 
land, to him and his heirs forever. 

"I give and devise to my son George Frederick Wil- 
liams seven hundred and fifty acres of cleared land, to 
be cut off from the eastern part of 'Bunker Hill Plan- 
tation,' together with two hundred and fifty acres of 
the adjoining woodland, to him and his heirs forever. 

"I give and devise to my beloved wife Sally, to my 
said sons to whom I have hereinfore given plantations 
and to the said John W. and George F. Williams as 
Trustees for the estate of their sister Serena Kirk- 
patrick my swamp land known as the Big Field and 
Island to them and their heirs forever to be used by 
them jointly as pasture land. 

"I give, devise and bequeath to my said wife all the 
rest and residue of my property both real and personal 
of all kinds whatsoever to her and her heirs forever 
upon the following conditions to wit: 

293 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

*' L That she shall, upon the marriage of my daugh- 
ter Constance, convey to Trustees for the sole and 
separate use of the said Constance the sum of Fifty 
thousand dollars in money bonds or stocks or if my 
wife shall prefer it the same amount in land and negroes 
which my elder children who have been thus appor- 
tioned have received and in addition to either of the 
above named portions the following named negroes 
viz — Pamela and her children Ellen, Elizabeth, Julia, 
Robert, Ernest, together with the increase of the females 
the said property to be secured to her with the same 
trusts and limitations as in the cases of my daughters 
Serena and Alice heretofore married — And should the 
said Constance not marry in the lifetime of my said 
wife that she my said wife shall convey to the said 
Constance, by last will or by deed or gift the said sum 
of money or the said property real and personal either 
in fee simple or with limitations. 

**2. That she shall upon the marriage of my daugh- 
ter Sally Power convey to Trustees for her sole and 
separate use the sum of fifty thousand dollars in money 
bonds or stocks or if she my wife should prefer it the 
same amount in land and negroes which my elder chil- 
dren who have thus been apportioned have received 
and in addition to either portion herein named the 
following negroes — Nat, Esther (Phillis, George and 
Edward) (the children of Nat and Esther) together 
with the increase of the females the said property to 
be secured to her with the same trusts and limitations 
as in the cases of my daughters Serena and Alice and 
should the said Sally Power not marry in the hfetime 
of my said wife that she my said wife shall convey to 
her by last will or by deed or by gift, the said sum of 

294 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

money, or the said property real and personal, either 
in fee simple or with limitations. 

"3. That she shall by deed or will as she may choose 
convey to my son John at her death my residence known 
as the Factory with three hundred acres of land around, 
or if he prefer it five thousand dollars in money to 
build a house and three hundred acres of land wher- 
ever he may select it in my upland. 

"4. That she shall by deed or will as she may choose 
convey to my sons John and George if they or either of 
them shall be living or if otherwise to others in trust 
for my daughter Serena Kirkpatrick and after her death 
to her children my plantation called Plumfield in Marl- 
boro and in Darlington — the boundary in Darlington 
to commence with the line known as the Northern 
boundary and running with the said line to the old 
Darlington road, thence with said Road to Buckholts 
Creek, thence down said Creek to the River lowgrounds; 
together with the stock provisions and necessary plan- 
tation tools and utensils that may be thereon at the 
time of said conveyance; and also the sum of five thou- 
sand dollars in money, to be held by them to the same 
uses and trusts as the property heretofore conveyed to 
them by me for the use and benefit of the said Serena 
Kirkpatrick. 

"It is further my will and desire that my said wife 
should dispose of that portion of my estate hereinbefore 
given to her, as she may choose, either by deed or will, 
the conditions hereinbefore mentioned having been first 
observed, and in such portions and to such persons as 
she may choose; but if my said wife should die before 
me or die leaving no will, or having conveyed by deed 
the aforesaid property as directed, then it is my will 

295 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

and desire that after the payment of the portions of my 
daughters Serena, Constance and Sarah P. and of my 
son John W. as direction in the conditions annexed to 
the devise and bequest to my said wife, that my sons 
John W. and George F. and my daughters Serena, AUce, 
Constance and Sarah P. shall take the remainder of 
the property hereinbefore given to my said wife, to be 
divided amongst them, share and share alike, the child 
or children of any deceased child to represent his, her 
or their parent; and the portions going to my said 
daughters to be secured to them and their children in 
the same manner as the portions heretofore settled on 
my married daughters by me. 

'*I do nominate, constitute and appoint my sons 
John W. and George F. the Executors of this my last 
will and testament, with power in either or both to act 
in the premises." 

At the close of the war the negroes were free, the 
land was secure but comparatively valueless. Four 
hundred bales of cotton were in Mrs. Williams' posses- 
sion. As to what became of these bales, a few words 
will cover it all. "The bales of cotton on the Williams 
plantation after Appomattox had been all or in part 
subscribed to the Confederate loan and subsequently 
purchased in bonds of the government from the gov- 
ernment. Sherman did not go into Robbin's Neck." 
Another statement about it is found in Mrs. Mary 
Boykin Chesnut's Diary from Dixie made on the 31st 
of May, 1865: "Mrs. W. (Mrs. J. N. Williams) drove up. 
She too is off for New York, to sell her four hundred 
bales of cotton and a square, or something which pays 
handsomely in the Central Park Region, and to cap- 

296 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

ture and bring home her belle fille, who remained North 
during the war. . . . She was very kind. In case 
my husband was arrested and needed funds, she offered 
me some 'British securities' and bonds." Whether 
Mrs. WilHams sold her cotton and pocketed an im- 
mense sum, or failed to get a cent, owing to its once 
being Confederate property, cannot be stated. The 
real estate, however, netted her between ninety-nine 
and one hundred thousand dollars. The piece of prop- 
erty came into the possession of the family by the 
failure of Colonel Williams' factor, to whom he shipped 
his yarn and cloth. He was pleased with the invest- 
ment and went to a sale to add to it some adjoining 
property, but it became his sick headache day and he 
desisted. (Kirkpatrick.) Rev. Robert WilHams, Da- 
vid Williams, David R. Williams and John Nicholas 
Williams all lie entombed on the Williams estate. 
The last two only rest in the Williams burial ground, 
under the cedars and a great elm. Upon the tomb of 
the latter his affectionate and dutiful children focussed 
their thoughts and feehngs into an epitaph of one word, 

"FATHER." 



297 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE OVERFLOW 

NORMAL men are religious, but few are really 
pious. Among the latter class General Wil- 
liams was not placed by his contemporaries; 
but he was, according to a commonly received nugget 
of wisdom, the noblest work of God, an honest man. 
He enjoyed the pulpit administrations of Dr. Richard 
Furman before the days of Sunday-schools and became 
familiar with the best contents of the Bible, and used it 
on great occasions. His nickname, Thunder and Light- 
ning Williams, fitted the strength of his voice and rapid 
elocution, but the similitude was probably suggested 
by his application to ''treason" of the language of 
Revelation VI, L In his vehemence against the New 
England defection in the War of 1812, he spoke of it as 
rending the veil of the constitution, which he ever re- 
garded as the holy of holies in our political temple. 
In his last and eloquent message to the legislature in 
1816, his language was a reverberation of Job's refer- 
ence to the grave — you have come up to the appointed 
house of the people, in connection with "the wisdom 
that Cometh down from above." One of his last and 
happiest quotations was a rebuke to certain anonymous 
critics who had been abusing his conservatism — they 
have for once omitted the practice of the sublime 

298 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

scriptural doctrine of doing as they would be done 
by. 

What judgment did the officiating minister pass upon 
the life that had been closed? His words were winged 
and flew away, but the thoughts and feelings of men in 
all ages are similar as they stand around the lifeless 
form of a fellow-man. A Hebrew would have been 
reminded of the words, "Dust returns to the earth as 
it was, and the spirit to God who gave it." A Roman 
would have quoted from a poet, "Lands and houses 
and pleasant wife had all to be left and of all the crops 
and trees he tended, not one followed except the hated 
cypress." In a better mood, he would have added, 
"He will not altogether die. A large part of him will 
escape the grave. He will continue to live, not in 
Asphodel meadows but in the minds and memories of 
men. " One of his pagan ancestors would have thought 
of him as of a bird which comes into a lighted banquet- 
ing hall and after flitting to and fro, goes out again into 
the darkness, whither no one knows. Had a certain 
philosopher been present and questioned about the 
life of the deceased and its influence on the future, his 
cautious reply would have been, "You can count the 
apples on a tree, but who can number the trees in an 
apple?" Eighty-four years then in the womb of the 
future have passed, and what then might have been 
classed as mere prediction, comes now in the domain of 
history. The apples found on the biographical tree 
have been counted and some of the trees in the apple 
have in the intervening years germinated, reached 
maturity and borne fruit, each after its kind. 

It was not possible for the influence of an eminent 
man, devoted to politics, education, farming, manu- 

299 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

facturing and to social developments, to be restrained 
within the Hmits of his lifetime. It was inevitable 
that it should live on in the next generations and in a 
measure give direction to the forces of progress. In 
the light of after times, it appears to be awarding 
simple justice to his posthumous influence to record 
some subsequent movements in agriculture and edu- 
cation, which grew out from, or up after and in conso- 
nance with, his previous labors, or the labors of which 
he was the acknowledged leader. These two are chosen 
because in them the chain of events has been less dis- 
turbed by the disastrous subversion of our social econ- 
omy since his day, than that in social circles, manufac- 
turing and politics. A separate volume instead of brief 
desultory references might be devoted to each. 

He was a man of good understanding, that rare 
commodity which, in conjunction with patient energy, 
industry, and pubhc spirit, becomes a wellspring of 
life to the whole community. His plantation became 
an experiment station, primarily in its own interests, 
but all who wished shared in the benefits of its conclu- 
sions. He had no monopoly, however, in experiment- 
ing, in the state or in the neighborhood; nor did the 
scientific spirit which he fostered die with him. His 
son Nicholas went beyond him in gathering 1,500 
pounds of seed cotton and 40 bushels of corn per acre 
from a large body of his low grounds. 

One of his younger contemporaries, Benjamin Frank- 
Hn Wilhamson, born February 3, 1814, was engaged in 
a line of work equally important and scientific. As he 
lived on into the memories of men still in the land of 
the dying, the sketch to be given of him will serve to 
suggest details now forgotten in General Williams' 

300 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

methodical management of his plantations and also 
give a hint that one instance of such excellence in the 
farming line could not have been a solitary phenomenon. 
Benjamin F. was blessed with a father wise enough 
and able to educate him at the best schools and grad- 
uate him at the state college and, after his graduation 
in 1833, to present him with a half interest in two farms, 
one a fine one on the Pee Dee River the other on Black 
Creek called the Oaklyn Plantation, the place of his 
birth. After disposing of the river lands, he concen- 
trated his interests on the latter plantation, where he 
built a modest home and began the foundation of a 
career that made him a planter of recognized ability 
and success. The fields had been worn out and largely 
abandoned for the more fertile but uncertain land on 
the river, and was at first very unproductive. His 
friends freely criticised him for making what seemed to 
be an unwise and foolish trade, but by method and 
perseverance Oaklyn became so productive and re- 
munerative that at the beginning of the War between 
the States he was accounted one of the most successful 
planters in the state and had accumulated a goodly 
fortune. 

His plantation was a model of method and order and 
the organization was most complete. The barns, 
stables, and outbuildings were arranged and placed to 
the best advantage and convenience, and the spacious 
premises were laid olT with great precision and exact- 
ness. The negro quarters were laid off with streets 
and set with shade trees, and the overseer's residence 
so arranged at one end as to command a view of the 
quarters. Every road and boundary was as straight 
and as square as circumstances would permit. Every 

301 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

building was set square and true, and every field con- 
formed to a convenient shape and size. The ditches 
were laid off with so much judgment and care that for 
half a century it has been unnecessary to cut new ones. 
There was a place for everything and everything was in 
its place. The plantation was entirely self-sustaining 
and independent of the outside world, except for salt, 
coffee, clothing, shoes, drugs, iron, and a few other 
articles. An abundance of everything that could be 
grown under our sun and clime was produced. Most of 
the agricultural implements were made on the farm, 
and wagons were repaired and rebuilt until they lasted 
for twenty years. An abundant supply of seasoned 
hickory, oak, ash, and other woods was always on 
hand. 

The negroes were well housed, well clothed, well fed 
and well cared for. They were carefully trained to do 
the work that they were best qualified to do, and many 
had their specialties : Tom was a good carpenter, Dave 
an excellent blacksmith. Big Ben the chief wagoner, 
Richard the ditcher, Manuel the butcher. Will the 
cattle minder, Flander the driver, Enoch the rail splitter, 
Alfred the hewer. Ham the ox driver, and Peggy was in 
charge of the children and the sick, and had a garden 
of herbs and medicinal plants. Even the mules were 
used for the work that each was best fitted to do. 
There was not a mulatto on his place. Daniel Jessie, 
a large black negro of remarkable native sense, judg- 
ment, and ability was foreman and assisted the overseer, 
and many things were entrusted to his care. After 
the war Mr. Williamson's negroes were sought for by 
others on account of their training, knowledge, and 
ability to do good work. 

302 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Shortly after Mr. Williamson began to plant he at 
once began to select and improve seeds of various kinds. 
About 1838 he procured some seed corn from Virginia 
which he liked very much, and began to improve by 
selection until he produced a distinct variety that was 
true in reproduction and of a very excellent quality, 
now known as the "Williamson Corn." Dr. Parker of 
Columbia, who held the record yield for so long of 212 
bushels per acre, obtained the seed with which he 
planted the acre directly from Mr. WilUamson. He 
also produced an excellent variety of cotton and before 
the war, even before commercial fertilizers were used, 
he produced 14,400 pounds of seed cotton on his "Four 
Acre Patch." Without the use of any commercial 
fertilizers his entire crop had averaged 1,100 pounds of 
seed cotton per acre. 

During the fifty-three years Mr. Williamson was en- 
gaged in planting, he never bought a ton of hay, nor a 
bushel of corn, until 1881, when he bought fifty bushels, 
a fact that he was always ashamed to own. An abun- 
dance of bacon, rice, flour, vegetables and fruits were 
raised on his plantation. Beeves were regularly butch- 
ered and his hams and mutton were the choicest. 
Those who remember him know his constant and un- 
varying advice to others who planted was to raise 
their own provisions and "live at home." He was 
energetic and determined, yet very conservative in 
his views and opinions, and of excellent judgment and 
executive ability. He gave close attention to the 
smallest details and nothing ever escaped his notice. 
He cultivated the acquaintance of men who led in the 
science and progress of farming. Professors Tuomey 
and Ruffin, the geologists, and Dr. Ravenel the chem- 

303 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

ist and scientist were guests at his home. He was an 
admirer and endorsed most of the views and teachings 
of David Dixon. 

Mr. WilUamson attended strictly to his own affairs, 
yet he was public spirited and contributed to public 
causes. He was one of the chief supporters of the 
South Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical Fair Com- 
pany along with Colonel J. Wash Watts and others. 
He contributed to the capital stock of railroads, banks, 
cotton factories, and other public enterprises. While he 
never held a public office of any kind and refrained from 
taking a prominent part in the public meetings he sup- 
ported everything that was for the welfare and benefit 
of his community. His ideas were in advance of his 
time although eminently practical in their application 
in his own time, and the things he preached and prac- 
tised during his lifetime were in exact accord with the 
best practice and counsel of to-day. The importance 
of crop rotation, the value of the cowpea, humus, surf, 
and making and caring for home-made manures, were 
well known to him. 

In 1841 Mr. WiUiamson married Leonora Wilson by 
whom he had four sons. She died in 1855. In 1858 
he married Margaret Mclver, daughter of Gen. Evan- 
der Roderick Mclver, by whom he had three sons and 
three daughters, all of whom are now living. His sons 
are all farmers. He died at Oaklyn, October 20, 1887, 
near where he was born, under the shade of the beau- 
tiful oaks he had planted in his youth. 

On his way to and from Washington, 1805-1813, 
Congressman Williams habitually stopped at his friend 
Draughon's house near Fayettesville. Being struck 
with the accomplishments of his host's daughter, Jane, 

304 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

he persuaded his friend Peter Edwards to accompany 
him on one occasion, in order that he might see the 
young lady whom he thought so attractive and charm- 
ing. They fell in love with each other at first sight, 
and in due time Peter went to claim his bride and car- 
ried as his best man, Evander Roderick Mclver. He 
met at the marriage Miss Eliza Cowan and duplicated 
the experience of the older couple. Professor Peter C. 
Edwards was one of the descendants of the first pair 
and a daughter of the second became the wife of Benja- 
min Franklin Williamson and the mother of the six 
already mentioned. One of these, E. Mclver Wilham- 
son,* is known as the author of the Williamson method 
of increasing the corn yield. He has spent much time 
in explaining the method to agricultural gatherings in 
this and in other states, with no view to profiting finan- 
cially, as a paid speaker or as a disseminator of prolific 
seed. His method excited some honest opposition from 
agricultural editors, and its success "put a move on" 
government experimenters in the corn line, for which 
little credit is now given. As a result, however, of this 
plan of corn culture, where it is in general use, farmers 
are now making their own corn and provender. From 
20 to 300 per cent, increase in corn yields is reported as 
due to this preparation, culture, and application of the 
fertilizer at the right time. It has modified corn cul- 
ture in some places and revolutionized it in others. 
The author of the method is still among the living, as 
is also his co-laborer in the same field, Mr. David R. 

*A discriminating friend expressed the opinion that "the youngest of this trio was 
probably the most scientific farmer in Darlington County." The well-known third 
of the group owns several thousand acres of the Williams' estate and is full of that 
unresting, provident. Pee Dee spirit which, while holding on to what is tried and 
approved, readily ventures into new enterprises and public services. 

305 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

Coker, without mention of whom this overflow on 
agriculture in DarHngton County would be incomplete. 
In 1902 Mr. Coker became interested in the study 
of cotton in the hope of evolving a plant which would 
add to the income by its longer staple and larger yields 
— a feat pronounced impossible by some excellent sea 
island farmers. The time and thought put on this 
primary object were soon employed in applying the 
same principles to seed breeding as are applied to the 
breeding of animals. Until recently the great body of 
upland farmers thought little about the length, strength, 
and quality of cotton; but among the long lint growers 
on the coast, the quality was more important than the 
quantity. On John's Island an enterprising planter* 
received for years $1 per pound for his cotton, when his 
neighbors could not reaHze half that sum; but as soon 
as it became known that the value of the cotton was 
traceable to the seed, others surpassed him in growing 
the finest vegetable wool in the world. Seven years 
and many dollars were spent with scientifically trained 
experts before pedigreed seed were offered by the Coker 
Company, and since that time The Field Seed Spe- 
ciahsts, equipped with the best modern appliances, have 
vigorously enforced their scientific principles, in the 
selection of the leading field crops. The Pedigreed 
Seed Company operates an experiment station also, 
unconnected with the government ; and the conclusions 
reached on its trial grounds go forth with all the au- 
thority legitimately due to scientific investigation and 
demonstration. The ideal toward which the special- 
ists are aspiring is as simple as it is starthng, that every 
seed in the row or in the field shall be there by its own 

•Seabrook's report on sea island cotton, 1841. 

306 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

merit and shall contribute its proportion to the sum 
total at harvest time. 

As the disquietude about the tariff grew in intensity, 
General Wilhams planned to be so independent of im- 
ported articles that the tariff could not clip from his 
income enough to feed a tide waiter. The key to his 
success lay in his corn yields. Herein was the beginning 
of his agricultural wisdom. A practical successor was 
Mr. Mclver Williamson, whose name is affixed to the 
new method of putting in the crib better corn than 
ever came from the West. When cotton had reached 
its lowest ebb General Williams' experiments led him 
to believe that the cotton seed oil and meal would add 
ten dollars to the value of the labor used in making one 
bale. The honor of further enhancing the cash possi- 
bilities of the same labor must be awarded to Mr. Coker, 
by whose exertions the long lint cotton has been super- 
seding the short lint varieties. The premium of a five- 
hundred-pound long hnt bale has ranged in recent years 
from ten to forty dollars over the short lint. A de- 
mand for the long hnt had to be created or enlarged 
among the mills and a market opened at Hartsville to 
handle from 18,000 to 24,500 bales annually. It is 
estimated that the staple crop of Darlington County 
will in the present season put at least one million dollars 
of extra profit in the pockets of the farmers. The 
increased income on the farm enables the planter to 
pay better wages to the laborers who can rise to the 
skill and rehability needed in the planting, cultivating, 
and ginning of the long hnt. It is unavaihng to preach 
to the predatory animal called man from the text, 
"Thou shalt not steal," or about temperance when his 
family is in a chronic state of hunger and poorly clad. 

307 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

Change the conditions so that his labor more than 
meets his daily needs and he will become a new man. 
Whatever puts more bread into the mouths and more 
comforts into the lives of the men who dig out of the 
ground their hard-earned dollars, is at the same time 
lifting upward the whole fabric of society. 

The development in the art and science of agricul- 
ture in Darlington County may be paralleled by the 
development of politics and jurisprudence in Abbeville. 
Over on the western side of the state, Waddell's Acad- 
emy did for Abbeville what St. David's did for Dar- 
lington. Out of the school came forth Crawford, 
Calhoun, McDufTie, Cheves, Legare, Longstreet, and 
other eminent men, and for many years preceding the 
war between the states the talent assembled at the 
village was capable of manning with credit the leading 
executive and judicial ofTices at Washington. The col- 
lective organism was political and judicial, far in ad- 
vance of some other counties. The first secession 
speech was made and the last cabinet meeting of 
Jefferson Davis was held in this village or vicinity. 

Though unravaged during the war, the county was 
not less effectually crushed financially than the Sher- 
manized portions of the Pee Dee. Neither the leaders 
of the people nor their sons were prepared for farming 
or manufacturing, when emancipation stripped their 
fields of laborers and reconstruction closed for eleven 
years the door to politics. The practice of law was 
the only sphere left for the exercise of their genius. The 
people were industrious, economical, social, appreciative 
of schools, but wholly agricultural and incoherent, ex- 
cept in politics and in ecclesiastical affairs. Progress 
was made and individual thrift accumulated cash, but 

308 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

for several decades it had to be sent abroad for invest- 
ment, where individual and corporate sagacity com- 
bined to offer inducements. In Darhngton County 
the war did not destroy the group or social organism. 
It was paralyzed; but gradually it revived and showed 
identity with its former self. Had its previous records 
been entirely effaced, subsequent developments in di- 
versified pursuits would have pointed to an earlier ex- 
pansion of the county quite different from that of the 
western one. 

When the Welsh pitched their tents on the banks of 
the Pee Dee, the first engineers in South Carolina, the 
buffaloes, had already decreed that the Pee Dee section 
should be somewhat of a back country. The Indian 
trails followed the buffalo paths, and the white man 
followed the Indian trails with dirt and rail roads. 
The early settlers in their advanced position could not 
depend on the distant government for protection. They 
formed themselves into Regulators for safety, and 
organized the St. David's Society and Academy for 
education, performed all the duties required by the 
state and cultivated self-reliance and personal initia- 
tive. They were most fortunate, owing jointly to 
their own characteristics and to external circumstances, 
in estabhshing a happily working equihbrium between 
their ardor in the pursuit of private gain and their 
readiness and zeal in combining in movements for the 
common welfare. Sturdy self-reliance in private mat- 
ters made them well-to-do and, in public affairs, strong 
in that high civic virtue which disdains to ask the 
government to do what a community can best do for 
itself. The efforts to improve methods, to increase 
the fruits of labor and raise the standard of living, be- 

309 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

gan in this distant backwoods, and continued, with one 
forced intermission, to be put forth in the same spirit 
and for the same purpose. Hence DarUngton's large 
contribution in the great awakening on the subject of 
the art and science of agriculture. The government, 
after having been long a laggard, became extravagant 
in its appropriations of men and money for agricultural 
improvement; but the momentum from the past and 
the gathering experience of the present enabled private 
enterprise to make, by its practical contributions to 
agriculture, the name of Darlington County better 
known both among farmers and in scientific circles 
than any Southern experiment station of the govern- 
ment. 

At the time of General Williams' death the necessity 
for the existence of the St. David's Society was passing 
away. The community was wealthy and the time 
had come when the management of the school could, 
without detriment, be assimilated to that of the schools 
in the state. The Welsh Neck Church had never been 
represented in the St. David's Society, but it had 
opened its building, when needed, to the meeting of the 
Society, to the commencements of the Academy, and 
even for use as a school when the Academy disappeared 
in smoke and ashes. It was, however, sharing in the 
good fruits of the Society's work, as wealth and culture 
became more general. The faithfulness of the com- 
munity in caring for primary and intermediate educa- 
tion, with General Williams both as servant and leader, 
had been preparing the community for larger educa- 
tional projects, and as it has often happened in the 
history of the world, the influence of the school, the 
exponent of Greek civilization, and the church, the 

310 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

heritage from the Hebrews, became alHed and supple- 
mental. 

In the year 1834 a young pastor, James C. Furman, 
came to Society Hill, who was destined to direct the 
minds of his brethren to a school outside of the Welsh 
Neck and Pee Dee bounds and to reap a harvest sown 
by other hands. The Furman Theological Institution 
was in operation at the High Hills of Santee under the 
auspices of the State Baptist Convention. At the close 
of a sermon the pastor spoke of the school and prof- 
fered to forward any amounts contributed. That 
afternoon he received a note from Mrs. Elizabeth Wil- 
hams containing $100 and the statement that she 
expected to do more for "this essential business." A 
deacon gave 1 1,000 and several gave $500, making a 
total of nearly $3,000 at the very dawn of private 
liberality to higher education. The women helped to 
clothe the beneficiaries, the men contributed to the 
expenses of the institution, and the students came back 
to the churches as pastors. In the eleventh year of 
his pastorate Mr. Furman was made Senior Professor 
of the Institution, then removed to Fairfield. Influ- 
ential trustees, J. K. Mclver, J. O. B. Dargan, T. P. 
Lide, were drawn from the Welsh Neck Association as 
were also practically the whole faculty, Furman, Mims, 
and Edwards, together with their wives. In 1850 the 
denomination was engaged in transmuting the Furman 
Institution into Furman University, into which effort 
the Welsh Neck Association put three-fourths as much 
money as the larger and wealthier Charleston and 
Savannah River Associations. Its liberality saved the 
day. Mr. Furman explained the action of his Welsh 
Neck friends as a tribute to the work of the Seminary 

311 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

in sending back good ministers to the churches; but the 
fuller reasons will reckon also the preparatory work 
done by the St. David's Society. Nor did the Associa- 
tion stop here. The same liberality was shown in 1858, 
when the theological department, now at Louisville, 
Kentucky, was separated from the college courses; and 
when the Seminary carried with it a part of the endow- 
ment, L D. Wilson and T. P. Lide were among the 
first to subscribe $5,000 each to help fill the vacuum. 
While these larger movements were in progress, a num- 
ber of citizens met at Black Creek Church, Darlington 
District, and passed resolutions favoring the establish- 
ment of a Female Seminary of high order at Spring- 
ville, on the lands of Mr. James Lide, ten miles east of 
Hartsville. The Association heartily endorsed the proj- 
ect and endeavored to bring it to pass, but in connec- 
tion with their other obligations, it proved to be im- 
practicable. 

The St. David's Society was indeed a light to lighten 
the Gentiles; its influence radiated and created other 
centres before it shrunk up to a local field. The Welsh 
love of learning passed in invisible currents further and 
further from its central dynamo. A few examples must 
suffice: The Pegues, Gillespies, and Terrells were among 
the founders of the Society in 1777-8. William Terrell 
did not survive the war, but one of his granddaughters 
became the mother of James Henley Thornwell, who, 
on account of his widowed mother's poverty, was edu- 
cated by her friends. Five denominations contributed 
to the making of the young man. A Welsh Baptist 
mother gave him brains; one of his first teachers was a 
Catholic; a good Methodist, Malachi Pegues, furnished 
him board at a country school; two large-hearted Epis- 

312 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

copalians of Cheraw educated him at the South Caro- 
lina College, the Presbyterians provided him a pulpit 
to grow in and a wife, Miss Nancy White Witherspoon. 
He became president of the college and was regarded 
by many as equal to McDufTie in eloquence and to 
Calhoun in intellect. He was a true patriot in his 
love of South Carolina and especially of the Pee Dee, as 
is made manifest in Palmer's Life and Letters of Thorn- 
well. One of the freak results of the war between the 
states has been the oblivion into which the ethical and 
political writings of such men as Thornwell and Lieber 
have passed. They were once luminaries at the State 
College, with no equals to-day. North or South. In the 
same decade but a few years later than Thornwell, 
Alexander Gregg represented the Pee Dee section as a 
student. He was a native of Society Hill, felt its 
assimilating forces, imbibed its spirit, graduated at the 
college in 1838, and became an Episcopal rector in 
1846, and served for thirteen years the historic St. 
David's Church at Cheraw. He took a lively interest 
in the cause of education and became an active member 
of the Academic Society and Lyceum. He was one of 
the founders of the University of the South, and be- 
came a faithful and influential member of the board, 
chairman of the committee of ways and means, and 
finally Chancellor by the unanimous vote of the trus- 
tees. He exemplified in his life the same love of learn- 
ing which he inherited and traced to its source in his 
history of the Old Cheraws. His biographer, Noll, 
represents him as considering the work of education 
indispensable to any good work. 

The Pee Dee flowed on in its ancient channel, but 
that other stream of beneficence which had its springs 

313 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

in 1777 had been tapped by irrigation canals, which 
led off, one to fructify Furman University and the 
Seminary, another to water the University of the South, 
another to vivify the State College and still other 
smaller rills, into churches, schools, and localities, in 
the persons of cultured emigrants, in places as far apart 
as Baltimore and San Francisco; but the bed which 
extended through the Welsh Neck Association appeared 
to be nearly dry for a generation after Sherman's tran- 
sit. There was to be sure liberality such as found 
expression through estabhshed channels, as men grad- 
ually emerged from the general desolation; but there 
was no revival of interest in the establishment of local 
private schools. The state had stepped in with its free 
schools and made less need and room for such insti- 
tutions. The Welsh community had in its early ex- 
posed situation and manly self-reliance grown up to 
be a government within the government, and put its 
seal of approval upon education of the community by 
the community as a private enterprise. And now in 
this recuperating generation, this ennobling character- 
istic appeared to be effaced or to have gone with slavery 
and other ante-bellum non-essentials, until 1894, when 
the Welsh Neck High School at Hartsville was organ- 
ized. It was conducted as a High School fourteen 
years, under Associational control and then changed in- 
to the Coker College for Women. Its grounds in the 
heart of Hartsville and its small endowment went over 
to the college which has been in operation eight years. 
Since its inception it has been marching to the front 
rank of colleges in the state, growing steadily in patro- 
nage, in its faculty, in its buildings with latest equip- 
ments, and in its active endowment. It is an indige- 

314 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

nous institution whose eponyme (Maj. James Lide 
Coker) is the dynamic force behind its surprising 
growth. The value of the plant and endowment 
places it financially at the head of all the Female Col- 
leges not supported by the state; and as to productive 
endowment it is scarcely behind the foremost of the 
male colleges. With all that it stands for, the College 
is more appropriate than a shaft of Parian marble as a 
monument in honor of the men who laid the early 
educational foundations, and of their successors, who, 
like the runners in the torch race, received the light 
and handed it to the next generation, and, not least of 
all, of the founder, who in the exercise of the utmost 
freedom of his own will, has brought to pass the planned 
but unrealized design of his earlier contemporaries in 
the field of education. 

Marlboro, Chesterfield, and Darlington Districts be- 
came in the middle and latter half of the eighteenth 
century a melting-pot of five or six races. There came 
forth from the mint a blended people, bearing an image 
and superscription that was not to be erased by the 
flight of time. Ab uno disce omnes, from one learn all. 
From that one who was favored by nature and by art 
in the formative period of the country and multipUed 
himself in various useful pursuits, learn that his com- 
patriots imbued with similar good principles differed 
from him and from one another only in degree, as they 
pushed or push with energy and intelligence their pri- 
vate operations and, with equal readiness, initiate or 
join in schemes of cooperation for social improvement. 

Sources: A bulletin. Founder's Day, of the State 
University; Minutes of the Baptist State Convention, 

315 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

and the Welsh Neck Association, Noll's Biography of 
Bishop Gregg, Palmer's Life and Letters of Dr. Thorn- 
well, and the traditions of the Pee Dee, some records 
of the Pee Dee Historical Society, Mr. Bright William- 
son, Secretary. 



316 



APPENDIX 

LETTERS 

Rocky River Springs, 7 Sept., 1828. 

My Dear Sir: You have done me a great favour by your letter of 
the 24th ulto. which came to hand this day, and for which I thank 
you heartily. Four days since on the 3rd I received the invitation 
to the Sumter dinner and immediately answered it. 1 have been so 
much indisposed for several weeks that 1 have lost almost all my 
spirits & animation, & fearing I should not be able to attend was 
most reluctantly obliged to decline, with a determination, however, 
to go if I could. I said truly to the committee that nothing but sick- 
ness could have kept me from them. The answer is rich, there can 
be no doubt of my sentiments. 1 did not send a toast but will take 
leave to write another letter & add one, as much in point, as I can. 
If you receive it in time (I will enclose it in this) you will be pleased 
to substitute it with the committee & destroy the one sent to Sum- 
terville. I assure you my heart is warmly enlisted in the cause of 
which I feel anything but dispair, and of which I shall be delighted to 
give every proof. I will take any suggestions of how I may be service- 
able as proofs of your confidence & regard and pray no opportunity 
may be omitted. 

On the subject of the letter to the Union folks, it will take a great 
deal of harrasment to make me repent it, of which 1 anticipate not 
a little. 1 had seen the editorial comments (not truly editorial I 
suppose) just time enough to write a reply on the day I received the 
Sumter invitation. 1 presume the editor will not refuse to publish 
and therefore I am glad 1 have written it because it will convince 
you perfectly that there is no difference between us, even in "detail." 
I have been purposely misrepresented & have endeavoured to put 
my views in such a shape as all may understand me as I really meant 

317 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

to be understood. It now requires not the least sacrifice of vanity 
too. I believe, I must have written, obscurely at best on the subject of 
"the majority"; but blessed be God, I said "the majority"; and no 
where "a majority of members of congress" — such a thought never 
entered my mind, and 1 would even yet hope it was the glossings of 
the editor that gave rise in your mind to the idea, by his suggestions 
rather than deliberate construction of what I had written. It seems 
to me there is a difference as wide, as obvious, between the consider- 
ation, that the Tariff laws have been adopted by a majority; and the 
confidence oj relief from " the majority of the people at large" on whom 
I declared my reliance. So far however as the tariff itself is con- 
cerned and not meaning to include possible cases, I aver, 1 prefer it 
to disunion. 

I would reflect deeply and weigh thoroughly every word 1 utter, if 
1 could conceive it possible (I will any how hereafter) that they might 
have a bearing on you. 1 think in this you must, for once, be at fault. 
It is however every way satisfactory that 1 have sent to the press 
already such an explanation, as I think will be agreeable to you, even 
on that score. The truth is, my letter was written with more haste 
than any man ought to venture, before the public, but it was to be 
then or never. 

1 had taken a very different view from what you seem to think is 
expedient, in relation to the election, as likely to be affected by urging 
now, on the people the machinations of the agitators; & had deter- 
mined to push the subject, rather than wait "for further develop- 
ments of the motives of the actors," as you seem to recommend. I 
will cheerfully abstain, seeing it is your opinion, we ought. As a 
general fact I consider it all important to get possession of the public 
mind first. The failures I have seen result from procrastination 
alone have carried me to this conclusion. When I see my enemy in 
force, my first impulse is to attack. 1 1 is but a very short space before 
the battle must be fought. It sometimes takes a much longer period 
to put the public in possession of facts, concerning which not half the 
exertion is made to deceive as will be on the present occasion. But I 
say again, I yield my opinion cheerfully seeing that you who are most 
immediately interested think otherwise. Do me the favour to state 
the grounds on which this opinion is formed. 

I submit the enclosed letter perfectly to your discretion — it is in- 
tended for your service solely. If you like to substitute it for the 

318 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

other, or alter, correct or suppress it wholly according to your own 
judgment. I love, like Prince Murat in his best days, to lead the 
charge, I am a miserable poor hand at defence. 

God bless, prosper and keep you assured of the friendship of 

David R. Williams. 

To Stephen D. Miller, Esq., Camden, South Carolina. 

Mrs. Miller is requested to send on this letter if Mr. Miller has left 
home for Sumterville before it reaches her. 

Columbia, ij Sept., 1828. 

Dear Miller: Hearing from the Governor that you would be at 
his house to-morrow 1 enclose you a letter 1 have written to Gen. 
Williams. Pray read it and if you discover anything in it that is 
improper strike it out and amend. 1 wish you to back it with a letter 
also, and one from the Governor, and then 1 think our party may all 
be called back again to the old fold of the Telescope. It would be 
a pity that Gen. Williams should labour under a mistake either as 
to his friends here or as to Withers' character. His last letter to the 
editor if published must produce an irreparable breach between the 
general and his friends in Columbia. 1 consider it a personal attack 
upon all the Columbia coterie, but more particularly upon Preston 
and myself. About that 1 care not one cent, except that it must 
separate us for ever from Gen. Williams, to whom 1 am under 
personal obligations, as you well know. 1 am the last man that would 
wish to throw them off, but my rule has always been to resist every 
attack. 

You of course will consult with the Governor about the course 
best to be pursued in this unfortunate matter. You will oblige me 
then to direct my letter to the place in North Carolina, where Gen. 
Williams is, and to seal my letter and send it with yours and the 
Governor's to the General. 

Sincerely your friend, 

D. J. McCoRD. 

To Stephen D. Miller, Esq., or Gov. Taylor, Rice Creek Springs. 

Rocky River Springs, i^th Sept., 1828. 
My Dear Sir: Your interesting letter of the 14th inst. was only 
a moment since received; with it the Telescope stating that my reply 
was withheld by the person who had the disposition of it. 1 am with- 

319 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

out any other intelligence concerning it. You do not more regret 
that Withers and myself should come in conflict than 1 do, and prob- 
ably as I am as yet the only "wounded pigeon" we may not. I am 
willing to bear and forebear, and so far as expediency is concerned to 
yield openly and freely; as to principle not a hair, and no real friend 
would either ask or expect it. When I saw the first comments on 
my letter in the Telescope, my first object was to know who was the 
editor. At the Southern Radical Office 1 was told a very different 
man, indeed from Withers, was. 1 did not in the least doubt the 
information and wrote my reply. On the i8th Witherspoon came 
up and to my astonishment and regret told me Mr. Withers was. I 
immediately sat down, 1 wrote to Taylor informing him of my error 
and requested him to say to Mr. Withers for me that portion of my 
reply which referred to the editor was written under false informa- 
tion, and that of course nothing which it contained could mean him, 
etc. 1 also wrote to Smith requesting him to say anything that 
would satisfy M r. Withers that such were the facts. 1 f 1 know myself 
1 would rather chop my right hand off than use it to assail a virtuous 
man. Or if having so used it by mistake, would despise myself if I 
did not promptly do him ample justice. This you will understand 
was done before any notice in the Telescope. I have supposed some 
of your friends, and possibly mine also, may have induced Taylor 
to delay the publication because of the consequence of my seeming 
attack of Withers. Probably some for a very different reason, that 
my views make against them, and possibly some because I attack in 
it the "custom house and free port gentry." I have already written 
to Taylor to say, no matter from what consideration he may have 
acted, I assure him 1 am well pleased; particular, as I consider it 
fortunate I should not appear to be in conflict with Withers and also 
if any consideration looking to your interest be the cause 1 have also 
added. As the reply was noticed something ought to be said of its 
disposition and that it would be acceptable to me to suppress it wholly 
on Mr. Withers stating his conviction that 1 did not mean the odious 
construction which he had put on it, in relation to a reference of our 
constitutional rights to a majority of "members of congress" for de- 
cision — and being indisposed to discussion by the Legislature and 
wanting confidence in it, and which he might connect with an allusion 
to my having written the reply, under an impression that a very dif- 
ferent person from himself was the editor and that I choose not to 

320 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

appear as assailing him when, in truth, I meant another person en- 
tirely different. You seem also to act under an impression that 1 
am adverse to the Legislature discussing the subject, not so. 1 only 
am opposed to the people memorializing the Legislature under strong 
excitement — to their being driven from their own judgment and dis- 
cretion by the vehemence & passion which was then running riot 
over the state. 

When I assure you 1 am perfectly willing to act in conformity with 
the views you have suggested it is because I will not jeopardise your 
interest by a course which you think will have that tendency and 
thereby give the best proof 1 can that on questions of expediency I 
will give freely for the benefit of our party, without asking anything: 
but 1 know you will forgive me when 1 say 1 am perfectly convinced 
your first impressions were much more correct, namely, to put your 
election and our party on the broad question of Union, rather than 
to keep open the question. This may and does indeed suit the views 
of gentlemen who have committed themselves, and will not frankly 
back out as become some of the Columbia politicians; and our good 
friend Harrison may, without knowing it, be influenced by the situ- 
ation of his immediate neighbors. My head to a brass button that 
1 am not too moderate in my views hereafter, if indeed, as 1 believe 
at this moment 1 may be. Individuals and large public gatherings 
may say and do any foolish and passionate act, without any but 
relative commitment; but when the Legislature shall begin to act, 
then it is that the awful responsibility attaches; and only till then do 
the important questions press for an answer — what is the power? — 
what ought to be the mode of action? — I can conceive of no course of 
resistance, of coercion (1 mean) by the Legislature that, is not as 
great a violation of the constitution as the tariff itself; hence, the 
Legislature can't avoid the question of Union and therefore it would 
have been better for the radicals to assume it thereby giving impulse 
and influence, where they must ultimately receive it. I do not take 
the Mercury. 1 had heard of " Fair Play" when 1 wrote the letter 
which has given you satisfaction and therein is my entire my best 
reward. 

The pieces in the Mercury may be intended to bear as you surmise, 
I think however they have a double object, if they have the one you 
allude to. 1 conceive they are more personal, as I do not doubt, the 
questions that were propounded to me last session about opposing 

321 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

Hayne may have been intimated to more persons that we know of. 
I care not to see them, because I sat out determined to answer noth- 
ing of invective. I had a pubHc object. I will not mix my private 
matters with it. My principles as assailed in the Telescope apper- 
tained to the first and not the last; besides I feel sustained by the 
same two great principles that have been cardinal points to me since 
the first moment that I had a political principle, i. e. I believe the 
people are competent to self-government and everything growing out 
of it. I never would act selfishly on a public question, in other words, 
"honesty is the best policy" — For myself altho' I do tremble before 
the tremendous power of the press, 1 also feel that the people will 
never suffer an honest man to be ruined by it. 

It is very true that we pronounced the tariff unconstitutional. I 
do so still; but if the Legislature can do nothing by way of resistance 
that is not as bad or worse, it is better again to ask for it's repeal and 
if refused, test the law, no matter how desperate the appearances, and 
sit down under the decision. What my dear friend can the Legis- 
lature do, taking for granted it will not fly the Union? Pray answer 
this. 

Your account of the Sumter dinner was very interesting. Your 
speech much more so. It is a delightful effort. It will do you in- 
finite good. I am glad you spoke of the heinous doctrine of a major- 
ity of "members of congress." I take all that about Jackson to be ad 
captandum, and it is fair. I think any man no better than wild who 
looks for a repeal of the tariff from him, or any other substantial 
good to us. He may probably purge some of the offices and break 
the back of a few persons who have rendered themselves obnoxious 
during the canvass; but as to any great and reforming policy as abid- 
ing good I look for none to the Union, much less to us who are so 
feeble in point of members. I begin to doubt of his election and if 
his mad friends among us, can, they will be the cause of his defeat. 
If elected, his term will be another tissue of electioneering for the next 
four years. As he must administer in leading strings and the man 
Van Buren I have conjectured, whom he shall establish in the line of 
safe precedence will use all the influence of the government to provide 
for himself. But enough of prophesying. 

I notice your message from McCord, Preston & Withers. His 
mind must be that of a brute who is indifferent to the good will and 
esteem of his fellow men. Of a certainty 1 am particularly grateful 

322 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

for the esteem of such men. Of McCord I know but little and that 
is much in his favour. Of Preston's splendid powers and I believe 
virtuous views I am an ardent admirer. Of Mr. Withers I know still 
less, but had formed a flattering hope of his talents and principles 
from his display when he graduated, and from understanding he was 
high in the esteem of our friend Smith. Although he handled my 
letter in a strain that to me is much at variance from anything per- 
taining to veneration of its author, 1 protest before God it has left 
not the slightest resentment. But Mr. Withers did another act 
which may have escaped your notice, but which penetrated deep 
and wounded me to the heart's core. He also alluded to me after 
he had had the last word, designing to hold me up as the just subject 
of ridicule and intimated that 1 had shaped my course under the in- 
fluence of Gales and Seaton.* The discrepance between such a sug- 
gestion and high veneration can be reconciled only by supposing Mr. 
Withers has now changed his mind, from what it was when he so 
intimated, and 1 am free so to believe. It cost me all the philosophy 
1 could master to submit to this, but 1 did and in silence, and am glad 
that 1 had enough to suppress the resentment 1 at the moment was 
oppressed with. 

I think it would be well to hear something on the other side before 
we take for granted that Taylor is too obstinate. 1 1 seems to me he 
went too far in authorizing the Telescope to "draw back" the best 
part of his 4th of July dinner speech — he must have done so for some 
motive, like yielding to others. I suspect, there is a radical difference 
between Taylor and some who complain. 1 know he considers your 
election paramount to all questions, and believe will yield to procure 
it, all that he can be made sensible will tend to it. 1 write, however, 
wholly without any knowledge of what may have lately happened. 
1 take the allusion to Smith's differing with me in good part. 1 wish 
you had stated what it is he thinks the Legislature can do — for there 
it is that my mind is wholly at fault. I mean in the shape of resist- 
ance. I do school myself closely when 1 find 1 am in a tract which, 
the judgment of my friends forbid to them— 1 distrust it greatly when 
I differ from him and a few others. I believe firmly that the peace 
and prosperity of our country has been jeopardized. 1 thought some 
man ought to throw himself into the breach, to stay the madness of our 

*Gales and Seaton, editors of the National Intelligencer. 

323 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

career — to make men think. 1 was willing to be the scapegoat of 
the sins of the times; for you may be sure I was not so heedless as 
not to see I should be switched and skinned if not fall a temporary 
sacrifice. 1 am done with public life. I therefore was the more 
willing & 1 could do good thus to devote myself to "self-immola- 
tion." To do this in the best way is to hearken to the voice of friendly 
advice, and 1 hope I have proved it as 1 shall endeavor to do, on all 
occasions. 

God bless you and yours 

David R. Williams. 

P. S. Pray answer what can the Legislature do? 1 will write to 
Colonel Rees. 

The Hon. Stephen D. Miller, Camden, S. C. 



Rocky River Springs, \si Oct., 1828. 

My Dear Sir: Your letter of the 19th ulto. from Rice Creek was 
sent to me last evening from my residence. One from Taylor and 
one from McCord. My last to you has put you in full possession of 
what 1 had done about my second letter and 1 do not doubt has given 
you perfect satisfaction on the subject of conflict between Withers 
and me, endangered by the misinformation given me by one of the 
Editors of the Southern Radical. In reply to McCord's letter, read 
by you, 1 have written to him thanking him for the good office he in- 
tended me, in his attempts to prevent collision between me and 
Withers; and endeavoring to remove, so far as I can understand him, 
every distrust on his part and Preston's — and as the Governor was 
off, before my letter could have been received, desired he would apply 
to Mrs. Taylor for them, and make the explanation to Withers which 
I have before informed you of, and to scrutinize a third and last ad- 
dress of mine to the public — that if he, or if Withers thought there 
was anything in it which could injure you, or which could be offensive 
to my Columbia friends to stay the publication and communicate 
frankly their objections. In this third letter I have stated the course 
I think the Legislature ought to adopt, and have examined freely 
McDuffie's "excise system." 

But there is new matter for reconcilation in McCord's letter — and 
it would seem, drawing my teeth will have no effect to make my 
existence consistent with the public safety. 1 verily believe there 

324 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

is no way left but to chain me up by a very short tether. I have 
broke in to the public prints, under the most solemn fears. 1 will 
hasten to break out of them; for it would seem, if I succeed in my 
object to quiet the public excitement, 1 am likely to excite my friends 
against myself, at least to give them much trouble. 1 have en- 
deavored by the most frank and cordial explanation to remove all 
distrust from McCord and Preston. You saw the positive assump- 
tion in McCord's letter that, I could only mean him and Preston. I 
will state for your satisfaction and my own justification on what 
it is they have founded my supposed intention to assail them. God 
knows neither they nor any other individual, but the assemblage of 
fine writers and men of science and literature in Columbia which 
give tone and character to much of the reputation of the State in 
the walks of literature and belle letters that 1 alluded. In fact I 
meant exactly what 1 said and nothing else. 1 was treating in my 
reply of the misunderstanding, perhaps 1 might have also called it 
misstatement of my principles and opinions which I said alone arose 
"from his own wrong-headed construction, excuse the term Sir, 1 am 
a plain man; if it be in violation of the good taste of the political 
beau monde of the capitol, attribute it to my rusticity and not to a 
disposition to be rude." The gentlemen translated me, for it has 
become clear, 1 have some other meaning in all I say but that which 
lies on the surface, according to the feelings of suspicion, with which 
Mr. Withers comments had jaundiced my letter. 1 have tried to 
satisfy both. 

I have a very high opinion both of Harrison and his principles and 
judgment and therefore, would treat his opinion with deference and 
respect. Of the operation of my own moderate views against you 1 
can only say, 1 would deeply lament. Harrison has suggested a very 
easy remedy, and which goes to lighten the burthen of my feelings: 
but there is a matter at the bottom which, I wish he had touched 
definitely — what are those stronger measures he would have you ad- 
vocate? 1 have asked you myself before. 1 have asked the public. 
1 have asked everybody with whom I have conversed — excise, excise, 
excise, with the monotony of the wipperwill, they all reply. 1 shall 
not suspect you of advocating such "inefl'able" folly; can it be possible 
Harrison does? You remember what you said before, about Dr. 
Cooper, It has scarcely ever been out of my mind since. If it be 
true and 1 have strong ground to believe it, I am pondering, what an 

325 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

honest man ought to do in my situation. If he preaches moderation, 
what will Harrison do? for he seems aHve to his situation. 

According to your intimation I have written to Col. Reese — 
authorized him to use my name. I did not say publish — but I 
meant it, if he wished it — I contradicted the aspersion of your seeking 
to have your name brought out peremptorily; from personal knowl- 
edge that you endeavored to bring out Evans — that Robinson and 
myself were requested to endeavor to reconcile the wishes of all 
yours and his friends, that we had not the least difficulty to do so; 
for that, the moment Evans heard your name had been mentioned, 
positively insisted you should be supported, notwithstanding we 
assured him he would be supported by the whole party. 

1 need not add 1 should not have hesitated a moment to withdraw 
my letter agreeably to your request, if it had not already been so dis- 
posed of, relying soly and entirely on Mr. Withers' sense of justice 
to do what was right and proper in the case. 

Yours sincerely and affectionately, 
D. R. Williams. 

The Hon'ble Stephen D. Miller, Camden, S. C. 

Silver Glade, Pendleton, ii Oct., 1828. 

Dear Sir: 1 received your favour of the 14th ulto. 1 am now able 
to inform you with certainty that Mr. Hamilton will not be a can- 
didate. He has, all at once, become very patriotic, for he says that 
a division at the present crisis is to be depricated, and therefore he 
will not enter the lists. Poor old Edgefield has not been responded 
to from any quarter. 

We had an anti-tariff meeting here and entered into resolutions 
which you will see in due time. Mr. Davis and Col. Robt. Hayne 
addressed the meeting, Mr. Hayne said nothing new, but what 
he did say was well said, and very well received. 

1 do not think that Hayne can be beaten at present. General 
Williams was, perhaps, the only man on the Radical Side that_could 
have run against him and he is laid up in Ordinary.* 

I am dear Sir yours 

Tho. Harrison. 

Hon. Stephen D. Miller, Camden, South Carolina. 

*A mountaineer uses a nautical term — a ship laid up, out of commission. 

326 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Society Hill, 2^th October, 1 828. 

My Dear Sir: I use the liberty allowed me to enclose the letter 
of Judge Smith which you will present, should he go to Columbia; 
if not, be so good as to drop it in the Post Oifice after adding 
York Court House to the direction. I have meditated very 
solemnly on the information relative to the Washington doings, 
which 1 made known to you and your opinions thereon and 
have concluded not to promulgate them unless driven to the wall 
for defence. This determination 1 have made known to Judge 
Smith in the enclosed letter. Should 1 be assailed in such a manner 
as to justify it 1 shall not hesitate to state the whole case over my 
name. 

The various matters which we communed on at Darlington have 
deeply engaged my feelings since. 1 rejoice with surpassing delight 
that the prospect is so bright before us in relation to your election. 
God forbid that a single shadow should pass over it. This for your 
sake and the true interest of the country I most ardently pray. On 
my own affairs I am not wholly unassailed by anxieties, but if my 
own wishes are known to myself, I would infinitely rather be made 
the target for every scoundrel's aim, than any friend I have should 
put anything at hazard. I am perfectly confident 1 cannot be ulti- 
mately injured, in the opinion of my friends and the public, and am 
very willing to suffer for a season rather than they should for a 
moment under present circumstances. Your conversation and 
Wither's promises have induced me to look again to the 2nd sec. of 
the 3rd article of the constitution. 1 have been made to swear so 
often to support the constitution I begin to fear my mind starts at 
shaddows when there is no substance to throw one on it's meditations. 
1 hope Mr. W. will be able to convince me of my error, if 1 am in 
one and I confess my leaning is to be brought over to your's and 
Smith's opinions. While we belong to the Union we must obey the 
constitution in all its parts; not those requirements only which we 
approve, but those also which we dislike, is it our duty to obey. 1 
have come moreover to this opinion that, without a violation of the 
oath taken by the members of the legislature, 1 do not see how they 
can resist at all, except by calling a convention. We have signed, 
sealed and delivered and are as much bound to the U. S. constitution 
as to our own. Let the Legislature then in its next meeting confine 
itself to one system of measures; to argument, protest and memorial, 

327 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

if these fail, we shall gain time and I think allies to support those of 
another character to be hereafter decided on. 

1 am in much haste but under all circumstances your sincere and 
devoted friend, David R. Williams. 

To Stephen D. Miller, Esq., Camden, South Carolina. 

Society Hill, yd Nov., 1828. 

My Dear Sir: You probably have been informed of my visit to 
Charleston. I found it's folks greatly excited by the thousand re- 
ports of Mr. Mitchell about the disunion caucus.* I left them full of 
anxiety for Hayne's letter which was generally known had been sent 
to Georgetown for publication. The continued denials of the Mer- 
cury through the summer and Col. Drayton's refusal to answer leave 
much fretful anxiety and distrust on the minds of many. We shall 
know more when Mitchell comes out. His opponents take the pre- 
cise course you predicted. 

1 believe Wilson is friendly to Hayne's election let who will oppose 
him. No one could say Hamilton was not a candidate and his long 
speech was wholly without a hint. I believe he waits for events. 
'Tis best to be up and a doing in good earnestness & care. The 
moderate men are multiplying fast. Georgia will not vote for Cal- 
houn but will bring forward Old Macon — what say you? Will the 
Telescope treat kindly any attempt to support the old saint and 
patriot? Pray find out, and of all things let me hear freely from 
you about it. Have any new events happened — can you hint any 
employment for me in your own affair. Dr. Cooper was greatly 
courted when in Charleston and assisted, say some, in their deliber- 
ations at the guard house. I do not doubt he is for Hamilton. 1 
carried my head very high about the governor's election — turned up 
my nose and spoke scornfully of any chance of opposition that could 
be excited in any quarter or on any subject, and prayed vehemently 
that Hamilton might offer. If Hayne hears half 1 said, and I believe 
he will all, he will leave no stone unturned to prevent opposition to 
you. 

God bless you Yours sincerely 

David R. Williams. 

To Stephen D. Miller, Esq., Camden, South Carolina. 

*About the disunion caucus, see Perry's "Reminiscences," p. 200, and the curious 
developments in the Charleston papers, 1828. 

328 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Society Hill, gth November, 1828. 

My Dear Sir: 1 have felt some anxiety to hear from you since 
my last request to know if the Telescope will allow a fair attack of 
Calhoun and an equally fair advocacy of Macon. I fear it may 
not and now more so, seeing, altho' cautioned about its complacency 
towards certain men, it has favoured Major Hamilton's speech at 
Marlborough with high enconium in which speech in my poor opinion 
there are two or three assertions utterly untenable, if not directly 
false. 

I received a few days since a letter from Macon in which he says 
that is probably the last letter 1 shall ever recewe franked by him. I 
presume he is about to surrender his public trust unto the hands that 
confided it to him. 1 am very sorry indeed for this. 

This morning 1 have a letter from Smith. I apprehend, he begins 
to doubt the ground he has taken is not tenable, at least, under 
present circumstances, not desirable. He says he had the burthen 
of writing the preambles and petitions to the legislature, asking for 
the exercise of the taxing power and had determined to let "those 
duties die a natural death," to which he has been induced probably 
from understanding that a certain "monster in politics was incul- 
cating that doctrine." He seems to doubt whether Hayne can be 
successfully opposed, unless Mitchell would do his duty to himself 
and country. Mitchell has come out — Drayton's refusal to answer, 
has given a strong bias against certain men; but unless Drayton will 
tell the truth, 1 see no chance for Mitchell. The Judge seems very 
confident of your success — will not go to Columbia under that belief, 
but would cheerfully if there shall be any doubt. He further adds 
"endeavour to prevail on Miller to abandon the taxing system." 1 
certainly would not obtrude my opinion on you whom 1 consider 
infinitely abler to decide, but consider it a matter of fair dealing 
between us, to let you know what is the opinion of the Judge now on 
that subject. Permit me moreover to ask you to read and think 
seriously on the 3rd paragraph of the 8th section of the ist article 
of the Constitution. The power to regulate commerce with foreign 
nations is not more exclusive and plenary than "among the several 
states" if so, can it be proper to attempt to counteract that power 
indirectly which cannot be done directly? This, however, is wholly 
superfluous, your own intelligent and inquiring mind is amply able 
of itself to do all that can be done to elicit truth, 

329 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

What is on foot concerning friend Evans' election, rather who are 
likely to be his opponents? I understood in Charleston that Dunkin, 
who had felt an inkling after a judgeship had been induced not only 
to yield those hopes, but also to step aside to let Mr. Harper feel 
his strength by offering for speaker. This from Wilson who is said 
to have a wish for a judgeship also and if so, it may explain why he 
should have become friendly to Hayne's election, after the Sumter 
letter. These may all be the mere ebulition of curiosity and anxiety. 

1 am very sorry to learn that the old radical mess have "desolved 
by mutual consent," and shall therefore lose much of the pleasure I 
anticipated in attending the meeting of the trustees. I think more- 
over it is yielding to the whims of others who have no right to take 
umbrage at the same associations which they practise themselves. 

God bless & prosper you, Your friend, 

David R. Williams. 

To Hon'hle Stephen D. Miller, Camden, S. C. 



Union Factory, 
Society Hill, ^th Jan. 1829. 

My Dear Sir: Altho' 1 may be the very last of your political and 
personal friends also who have tendered their congratulations to you, 
on your appointment to so elevated an office as you now fill, 1 yield 
to none of them a greater share of sincere and heartfelt joy at the 
event, if indeed all of them together do so much, as myself alone. 
My whole heart and soul was never before so much engrossed on a 
subject at issue, and of course my delight is unmixed unmeasurable. 
I feel a perfect assurance that your discharge of the duties devolved 
on you will be as gratifying to your friends as it must prove honor- 
able to yourself and beneficial to your country and consider myself 
as honored in being known as a decided well-wisher to your success 
notwithstanding I cannot consider myself as having aided in so good 
a work farther than mere wishes could go. ... 

You will of course have seen that the result of our Legislative 
proceedings have been of a character not to offend me — on the whole, 
1 hope even you will now consider the course fortunate at least, and 
if you yield that much, we will not dispute about it's wisdom. Thank 
God the two governments are not in conflict and with Jimmy Madi- 
son's coup de grace to the Calhoun notion on the subject, 1 think 

330 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

there is now confident reasons to hope and beHeve they will all be, 
on the tariff at least. . . . 

On the subject of your kind and friendly letter about my "manifold 
writer" I should long since have returned you my thanks, if I had not 
considered it morally certain you would have heard from Col. Deas 
that it contained no money when taken from my trunk. 1 pray 
for mercy on poor Simon whether guilty or not.* For 1 have suffered 
only in mind. Had its contents fallen into the hands of a devil, 
bloated with malice, he could have done no mischief except with 
one letter from Judge Smith, the loss of which you may be sure I 
deplored deeply, that being recovered all is now as it should be. 

1 am giving practical proofs of the sincerity of my advice to the 
" Union" folks on the tariff — in truth it has so roused me from a state 
of relative torpor that, I am making incessant efforts at independence, 
much beyond the inactivity 1 had gradually been getting into. 1 
shall make within the year more than 20,000 yards of coarse cotton 
and woolen goods — have killed upwards of 500 head of hogs of my 
own raising and have young mules and colts enough to hinder me 
from buying a western horse and mule for years. 

God bless you and yours, 

Your friend, 

David R. Williams. 

Stephen D. Miller, Esq., Governor &* Comtn. in Chief, Camden, S. C. 

[Postmarked Jan. 2g, Society Hill.] 

My Dear Miller: 1 have just received from Columbia The Case 
of Winn & — was struck, from the docket & the case of Gayle vs. White 
& Gayle was postponed, the court supposing it necessary to know 
the amount of property which Dr. Gayle had in order that if they 
did interfere with the decree they might order a proper settlement. 

I gathered but little of politicks. Preston was uneasy about his 
wife and I saw little of him. McCord went over to Sumter on a 
reference and 1 had but little conversation with him. 1 saw and 
conversed freely with Harrison on divers matters. 1 could not, 
however, say anything to him about the agency we had in electing 

*The only apparent or actual reference to the punishment of a slave found in his 
writings, except those referred to in the legislature. " I pray for mercy on poor Simon" 
shows a tenderness of heart akin to the Apostle Paul's when he wrote his postal card 
to Philemon and sent it by the runaway slave. 

331 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

him Treasurer. No allusion was made to that event or his conver- 
sation with McCord at your lodgings and 1 could not therefore say 
anything about either. If Smith should decline you must make 
up your mind to be his successor. Without difficulty we can bring 
every man to the field in this quarter. In Georgetown I suspect 
Alston if in the legislature will be for Huger. Pringle will go the 
same way, and Gregg being an old federalist will be that way inclined, 
but Harllee can make him go straight. When Withers returns we 
shall know finally and must take our measures accordingly. I shall 
make it my special business to see that everything is done within my 
sphere which ought, and 1 doubt not of success. If you come out, 
as you will, as the Back Country candidate 1 think we can count on 
the whole back country, except a part of the Savannah river, within 
the influence of Calhoun & Co., and on a part of the So Eastern 
parishes, who claim no relationship with the Rutledges and Pinckneys, 
but are essentially plebian. Make my best respects to Mrs. M. & 
believe yr. friend, most sincerely 

JosiAH J. Evans* 
26 Jan., 1829, 

Society Hill, S. C. 
To S. D. Miller, Governor S. C. Staieshurgh, S. C. 



Society Hill, \gth July, 1830. 

My Dear Friend: Your highly interesting letter of the 14th inst. 
reached me this morning. I have only to-day for the first began to 
move about again after having been pretty severely shocked in the 
upper region by my old enemy — profusely bled and phisicked. I 
was not only wilted, but completely prostrated and in such a state 
of lassitude nothing could have served as a stimulant but just such 
a kind and interesting letter. It has infused new life into my limbs 
and some vigor into my mind. 

I have never for a moment considered Huger as other than a can- 
didate since his Marion move by way of exciting attention and 

*Josiah J. Evans was an eminent lawyer living at Society Hill. He was solicitor for 
the Northern Circuit, 1817-1828. He was a close friend of Genera! Williams and was, 
it appears, the defeated candidate spoken of in the preceding letters. He became in 
1853, United States Senator, was re-elected and died in office. 

332 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

keeping old Billy before the people, seeing he had ahsquatalised, wrote 
a column or two in the Cheraw paper as Elector. All our 4th of July 
meetings on the Pee Dee manifest a good share of interest and 
friendship for him. The tost at the Hayne dinner, must have told 
among Huger's friends, and may serve to widen the breach between 
him and the Calhounites. H. has certainly taken a stand against 
them and thinks the time so alarming that every man should make a 
sacrifice for the country — as such he will resign his office and go into 
the legislature to keep down the unruly. Pettigrew does the same 
and for the same purpose. How noble and patriotic!!! I have this 
from good authority. 1 have seen Hunt's course with pain but 
nothing can surprise me now-a-days. The Courier s assaults on you 
I have not seen. The two papers containing my name were sent to 
me by a neighbor. 1 felt anything but complimented, and if there 
had appeared a way, without exposure to certain ridicule I should 
have entered my disclaimer. It brought me many times to the 
solemn self inquiry, "What have 1 done that my enemies praise 
me?" This is a country of so much freedom in nominating presi- 
dents, I am not to complain that any busy body should take it into 
his head to make a governor of me. 1 suspect a certain set of men 
in Charleston are willing to form a distinct party for themselves — as 
I have been written to, requesting me to go to the legislature also, and 
to come out for governor — having no appetite for either legislature 
or executive honours 1 have sent in, not my adhesion, but my refusal. 
I will run under no colours but of my own choosing, and these have 
been so long known, I shall not desert them even though 1 should be 
suspected. This Courier affair, thank God has brought me, among 
many regrets, some most animating delight, for without it, you would 
scarcely have had cause to have assured me of, what will give rest 
to many a day of affections that 1 fear is to come, your cordial and 
constant friendship. 1 reciprocate it from the deepest recesses of 
my soul, with all my might and with all my strength and would not 
exchange it for all the honours in the state combined. On the matter 
of nomination, then, we are of the same mind. 1 wish we could think 
as much alike as to what is expedient in future, although 1 do not 
believe there is any great difference. The indications in Charleston 
and the 4th of July tosts elsewhere, point to a state of things alarm- 
ing to me and which I think have been carried quite as far as safety 
warrants. Altho' almost all these tosts are so diplomatic, they in- 

333 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

dicate rather a temporising than an inflexible course, yet, still to 
continue the argument, backed by mischiefs more to be dreaded 
than any positive evil we have yet suffered 1 think inexpedient and 
ought to be discontinued. I am for preventing all irasibility among 
ourselves; to treat the resentment & even violence of others, not only 
with gentleness but respect. 1 am willing those who have resented 
loudest and highest shall be permitted to take any course they please 
that will allow their courage to ooze out of their fingers' ends most 
agreeably to themselves; but with this understanding, they have 
vapoured and scolded long enough. It has becoming too serious to 
keep up the quarrel, 'tis time for moderation and reason. In short 
and plainly, 1 am for peace, under any existing state of things that 
I think likely to rise, rather than civil war. This is the result to 
which the current sets. 1 believe the other states will not go another 
step with us — and that So. Carolina alone can do nothing better 
than protest and submit. Now it is a matter of no sort of conse- 
quence to me how we shall arrive at this result, or by what way we 
reach the object so that it be ultimately settled. For So. Car. along 
must be not only abused but put down. Moreover 1 see no probable 
remedy except in the relief that each individual may work out for 
himself — if each shall do all he can to avoid the import, very few will 
pay much. 1 have to this hour been doing this to the utmost and 
rely on it the exactions from me would not furnish a breakfast for a 
tide waiter. 

1 hear with great regret of Mrs. Miller's indisposition. 1 close 
with your proposition for a meeting with Smith with all my heart, 
and if no unforeseen event occurs, 1 will meet you in York or Green- 
ville. Advise me as the time draws near, when and where. Your 
letter is destroyed. God bless you. 

Your assured friend, 

D. R. Williams. 

Society Hill, S. C, July 20. 

To Stephen D. Miller, Esq., Governor 5r Comm. in Chief, etc. etc. 
Camden, South Carolina. 



R. R. Springs, i \th Aug., 1830. 
My Dear Miller: Your last kind favour reached me here two days 
since. I obey you by the first opportunity to write since it's receipt. 

334 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

I do so simply because you have desired I should "write soon." Ex- 
cept to thank you for your letter I have not another idea to com- 
municate; unless indeed 1 write about myself, a very pleasant subject 
to be sure, however unprofitable. Three weeks last Monday I began 
to fill up the great casm, made in my dam last Aug, and which you 
saw. I began with 44 mules and 35 fellows and although the ex- 
cavation was quite large enough to make one shrink from the job, 
nearly a year, I could not arrange, to suit with my other views, earlier, 
Altho I have lost nothing of the disposition to enterprise, 1 freely 
confess almost all the ability to labour, has passed from me. You 
are, bye the bye, not old enough to believe it was to this mainly that, 
Shakespear alluded, by desire and lasting performance, at least, the 
old thief ought so to have meant, rather than remind old fellows of 
what they never have a disposition to remember. 1 hope to finish 
this undertaking, time enough to arrange for meeting you in Green- 
ville or other place. . . . 

There is so much of heterodoxy in the politicians and their prin- 
ciples, such a mixt multitude of villanous compound, in most of those 
who are engaged in the present stir, 1 cannot hope for good from them. 
There are quite too few of correct political principles on other matters 
to guide in this — too much inconsistency among them, and too much 
of positive absurdity to admit of it. How men can believe in im- 
provements and the U. S. Bank, and yet pronounce the tariff uncon- 
stitutional, I cannot understand. If South Carolina could go the 
whole — if other states alike deeply interested would combine, some- 
thing might be expected. There are not now probably five men 
in the state who are or have been prominent in public life, really of 
the old school republicans. Our members of congress have clearly 
understood at Washington that the other interested states will 
advance not another inch. What then can we anticipate alone, but 
discomfiture? For the union 1 have ceased to fear, believing a great 
majority is for it. That the character of the state may sufi'er, I 
cannot but apprehend most seriously. God Almighty preserve 
both! 

Pray tell me who is Jefi'erson of the Camden Journal? Have you 
seen Burgess' speech? the old arch heretic has had the audacity to 
allude to me, we were classmates and almost always at enmity. He 
stiles McDuffie throughout Dr. Cooper's pupil. I wonder he did 
not, take the hydrophobie, at least break the old sinner's head. 

335 



THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF 

There is high precedent, of course authority, for the attempt at 
least. 

God bless you with health and happiness 

David R. Williams. 

N. B. You have had your own "great state right dinner" in your 
own mansion. Can't you enliven the gloom of these woods by a 
description? If there was anything picquant or to the point do let 
me know it. 

Society Hill, S. C, Aug. 14. 

Stephen D. Miller, Esq., Gov. & Comm. in Chief, etc. etc. Camden, S. C. 

R. R. Springs, Sept. 4, 1830. 

My Dear Sir: Your interesting letter of the 22nd ult, reached me 
some days since. I read it with great interest and have reflected 
on it with as much (I hope misapplied) sorrow. 1 ought to believe, 
as all my political, and nearly all my personal friends are opposed 
to me that, 1 am wrong, the deepest meditation, however, only affords 
hope, not conviction. I am obliged to you for the paragraph in 
Daniel's paper, for 1 can attribute it only to you. The manner in 
which my name has been used is truly mortifying to me. I console 
myself with the belief that 1 have no friend who will for a moment 
apprehend, I have been coquetting with the party who, have thus 
used it — there is not, nor never was any circumstance of association 
or sympathy between it and me. 

1 subscribe fully to the proposition you laid down at Statesburgh, 
but still cannot see that convention ought to be used even as you 
suggest. It appears to me there is but one step beyond that So. Co. 
has taken, i. e. after protest comes battle, and which I can consent 
to, only, when our wrongs shall become worse than disunion and civil 
war. The measures recommended as remedies are to my appre- 
hendsion as dangerous as fire in a magazine of gun powder to cure 
the walls of dampness. To all 1 have recommended no fight against 
convention, to vote against, but not struggle. If it shall be called, 
1 then think every nerve should be exerted without stint or measure 
to prevent mischief. This being my creed 1 hope we do not differ 
much. 

1 intend to go from hence to Charlotte, then to York C. H. 1 
shall be there on the i6th, 1 wish 1 had a copy of your records I 
might then judge of your course and progress. 

336 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

Your friend David who, bye the bye, seems to have some notion 
of the importance of being remembered by a Governor, sends you 
how de — he is well — the breach is repaired and completed with three 
days more work than 1 anticipated. 

Your sincere friend 

David R. Williams. 
To Stephen D. Miller, Esq., Governor 2r Com. in Chief, etc., near 
Camden, South Carolina. 

Society Hill, Oct., loth 1830. 

My Dear Sir: I reached here this evening with my family from 
the Springs and had the pleasure on my arrival to receive your favour 
of the 23 ulto. It is particularly agreeable to me, to find ample 
excuse in your mind is felt, for my failure of promise to you. 

I am glad you did not publish an extract from my letter, only be- 
cause it might have brought me again into the public prints; a burnt 
child dreads the fire. I really cannot conceive it possible that my 
opinions can prove a defense of yours if contrary to my convictions, 
you think otherwise, any sentiment, I may have expressed, or opinion 
avowed in that, or any other letter; or in any other way expressed 
to you, you may use at your discretion most freely, only do not give 
the words or phrases as extracts. 1 have no friend on earth I should 
be prouder to serve than you but I feel perfectly assured you need 
no defense, and if possible, yet more certain, that, it is wholly beyond 
my reach — in this spirit and confidence 1 regret you did not reply to 
Major Hamilton more positively and with less qualification. 1 not 
only am not but no circumstance can make me a candidate for the 
executive office. 1 am decidedly opposed to his present opinions, as 
1 always have been to those which, he himself now denounces; but 
most surely there can be no justice in his suff"ering himself to be 
persuaded that, I feel emnity towards him, by an authority which, 
to him is good in nothing else, for he has personal knowledge that, I 
have never been otherwise than opposed to the Courier Doctrines. 
I have not heard of what you say a native of Chesterfield has pub- 
lished about you and myself, altho 1 did hear that P. H. May would 
send a communication to the Courier. 1 presume it is the {jiece 1 
was told of. 

I have seen your Sumter speech, if 1 had been at your elbow 1 
would have asked you to suppress two ideas which 1 see in it ; and it 

337 



DAVID ROGERSON WILLIAMS 

is not impossible that, the first friend you might have met afterwards 
would have insisted for the retention of those very portions of it; 
it is impossible that men can think alike on all points; but yet more 
so that, my regards for you, can be cooled or weakened by any such 
difference of opinion as honest men may disagree concerning. Allow 
me to add nothing could give me more delight than to find our opinions 
on these matters were becoming more alike, as they have been here- 
tofore on all others. 

You are much to my regret wholly silent about our friend Smith: 
how stands the case with him? Will he be at Columbia? 1 presume 
Judge Huger has not withdrawn his pretentions, altho I have heard 
it so stated. 1 have been told that sharp words have passed between 
him and Hamilton — are they disunited? Will Hamilton support 
Smith? Rt. Campbell will be returned from Mariborough. 1 have 
not seen him lately. I know he is not cordial towards Smith but 
approves his politics. If Campbell shall vote for Huger he will cause 
a powerful inrode on the Pee Dee country. 

From present appearances I think the first and leading object of 
our new converts to the state right doctrine of the Legislature now is 
to find some harbour from shipwreck; some mountain or rock to 
hide them from the ridicule which threaten them. Messrs. Calhoun, 
Hayne, McDuffie and Hamilton have made for themselves a bed of 
thorns. If these persons could be separated from So. Carolina 1 
should be for leaving them to the repose they may find in it, but 1 
consider this out of the question, and am therefore averse to putting 
matters to extremes against them. 1 am in charity perfectly willing 
that they be allowed to work out their own salvation, as they best 
can. If they prefer the course which, you & Legare seemed to im- 
agine (if 1 understand you) so be it. 1 am out of the public eye, and 
hope to remain so; and will do nothing that shall tend to prevent 
an escape from the pending embarassments that threaten. 

God bless you my dear Sir be assured of the unaltered friendship 

& affection of 

D. R. Williams. 

To Stephen D. Miller, Esq., near Camden. S. C. 



338 




THB COUNTRY LIFE FBESS 
GARDEN CITY, N. T. 



UBBARV OF OONGRESS 

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